Voices in my head

Temporarily Like a Swan Song

2010-02-08T15:00:00.003-06:00

The Democrats seem to be basically nicer people, but they have demonstrated time and again that they have the management skills of celery. They're the kind of people who stop to help you change a flat, but would somehow manage to set your car on fire. I would be reluctant to trust them with a Cusinart, let alone the economy.

The Republicans, on the other hand, would know how to fix your tire, but they wouldn't bother to stop because they'd want to be on time for Ugly Pants Night at the country club.
-Dave Barry

Now that's good writing. I came across this piece in a book by an up and coming young (she's my age, so she must be young) politician that I hope will be occupying the White House come January of 2013. But that's not why you called. Wait, you didn't call at all. Anyway...

I really admire the talent of Dave Barry. Granted, a lot of his work is cotton candy, kind of fluffy, but not too filling. Well, that's ok. At his best, Barry's work is concise and pretty darn funny and can poke fun without being snarky. Sarcasm without snarkiness takes a good deal of talent.

I mention Dave Barry's writing only so I can make mention of my own more meager scribblings. Actually, I don't scribble, I usually just go directly to the computer and type. Whatever. When I read something by Barry it looks like it was fairly effortless to write. And that's the beauty of it. I think the reality is that he probably put a lot of work into what he did. He may have had a lot of fun doing it, but that doesn't mean he didn't put forth effort.

Effort is a difficult thing for me personally. I'm easily distracted. Must check e-mails for 100th time today...no! Finish the blog post. Is "The Simpsons" on yet? No. Must write. Now. Right now. Write right now. Sorry, I'll stop.

As I was saying before I so rudely interrupted myself, effort is a difficult thing for me. It's not easy for me to maintain focus. And I've kind of lost focus over time as to what this blog is about. Much like "Seinfeld" I'm not sure this blog was ever about anything. At least not any one thing in particular.

So I'm saying goodbye, at least for the time being. Unlike the past, when I didn't work as hard as I should have on the blog yet also ignored my other writing, I'm now going to concentrate my attention on that other writing, the kind that may one day end up in traditional book or magazine form, but I have a feeling I'll be back on the internet one day. I have many voices inside my head, and they can stay quiet and keep their opinions to themselves for only so long.

When and if I return to internet writing I'm not sure what form it will take, perhaps another blog, an actual website of my own, who knows? Maybe I'll forgo this new age of technology and just jot down random musings on post-it notes and send them to friends and family by way of carrier pigeon. You know, do things old school. Whatever I decide, the people who might want to know will be informed.

So that's that. I'll be deleting this blog, most likely at the end of the month.

Be seeing you.

Heaven, I'm in Heaven

2010-02-03T07:34:00.002-06:00

We live in a world dominated, musically speaking, by pop. Lady Gaga, Black Eyed Peas, Pink, Brittney Spears, they're all performing variations of pop music. And that specific form of pop music known as rock and roll does indeed seem to be here to stay.

Of course, there's nothing wrong with pop music. Songs of the day, songs of the moment, can become songs immemorial. Irving Berlin's "Cheek to Cheek" is one of those songs. It is one of my favorite tunes and that's because it's catchy and because it's catchy it stays in your head, even if you've only heard it once in your life. And I would reckon that many millions of people, be they fans of Motorhead or Mendelssohn, have indeed heard the song at least once, whether they came across it in a Fred Astaire movie or in one of the many versions out there by singers like Ella Fitzgerald or Bing Crosby.

"Cheek to Cheek" is 75 years old and has stood the test of time. It is a song immemorial.

Just as a little background to this clip from the 1935 film "Top Hat," Ginger Rogers thinks that Fred Astaire is married to the character named "Madge," thus her initial reluctance to get cheek to cheek with Fred.

Konan Karma

2010-02-03T07:21:00.004-06:00

Conan O'Brien may not have been the greatest "Tonight Show" host ever, but he is certainly one stand-up, righteous dude. Since his deal with NBC to walk away did not cover everybody on O'Brien's staff, such as stagehands, he's paying up to six weeks severance to as many as 50 people out of his own pocket.

This guy is generating some mighty good karma.

Feeling Haggard

2010-02-03T07:09:00.001-06:00

From the Free Dictionary: haggard adj. 1. careworn or gaunt, as from lack of sleep, anxiety, or starvation.

I was thinking of Merle Haggard, or more specifically the song "Okie From Muskogee," because I recently finished reading the book "The Wordy Shipmates" by Sarah Vowell. A book about Puritans in Massachusetts and Rhode Island would not make me think about Merle Haggard or his most famous song but the fact that Sarah Vowell is from Muskogee, Oklahoma does.

I don't know if Sarah Vowell would call herself an Okie, much less claim pride in being one. My understanding is that "Okie" is an offensive term. But she may indeed feel pride in her birthplace. Don't know. Never communicated with her, so I haven't asked any questions of her. I also don't know if she smoked marijuana or not, in Muskogee or elsewhere.

The thing about a well written country song is that it can shamelessly pull at your heartstrings and do that in a fairly simple and quick sort of way. A good country song is direct and tells a story without a whole lot of filler. It takes you to a place and introduces the characters and away you go. Or maybe it just makes suckers out of people born to be suckers. But that's a pretty cynical, non-country way of looking at things.

Rip Torn Arrested

2010-01-30T21:38:00.003-06:00

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.

Gil Scott Heron "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised"

2010-01-20T21:55:00.001-06:00

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!"

2010-01-20T14:58:00.003-06:00

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"

2010-01-20T14:36:00.006-06:00

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.

Some People Suck, Some Do Not

2010-01-14T12:50:00.005-06:00

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.

Haiti

2010-01-13T21:35:00.005-06:00

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More info and other organizations here.

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From the WTF Video files:

Blacker Than Blago: The Strangeness of Rod Blagojevich

2010-01-12T12:16:00.003-06:00

“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.

Jan Gabriel

2010-01-11T21:25:00.003-06:00

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.

Homer Simpson: "Top Ten Things I Learned From the Last Twenty Years of Television"

2010-01-11T12:38:00.001-06:00

Finally, Fleeing Thoughts on the First Decade of the Twenty-First Century

2010-01-08T16:31:00.004-06:00

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.

David Gray and Annie Lennox "Full Steam"

2010-01-06T15:30:00.002-06:00

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.

Happy New Year! (Almost)

2009-12-31T13:09:00.002-06:00

Happy New Year! It's New Year's Eve and time to party and it ain't a party without Tom Jones, now is it?

Mr. Bean may be more bomb than sex, but still, he does know how to bust a move.

Alan Watts - Music and Life

2009-12-27T15:28:00.000-06:00

Merry Christmas!

2009-12-25T11:10:00.001-06:00

Linus Explains Christmas

2009-12-24T09:37:00.001-06:00

Darlene Love "Christmas Baby (Please Come Home)"

2009-12-23T06:35:00.000-06:00

Does it get any better than this?

Norah Jones and Jimmy Kimmel Sing YouTube's 12 Days of Christmas

2009-12-22T06:37:00.000-06:00

Bing Crosby and David Bowie "Peace on Earth/The Little Drummer Boy"

2009-12-21T06:46:00.002-06:00

Another from the WTF Christmas Video collection. You've seen it before, but it is a classic that bears repeating.

Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer

2009-12-20T11:07:00.004-06:00

Rudolph is indeed the most famous reindeer of all. You might be able to name a couple of the other reindeer, but you'd be hard pressed to name them all. There's always one or two of those flying beasts whose names you can't remember. But Rudolph is the name that's always the first out of your mouth.

Rudy is a native Chicagoan. Robert L. May created him for his employer, Montgomery Ward, a Chicago-based retailer, to use as a marketing tool at Christmas. What this means is that Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer did things the "Chicago way." If someone didn't pay back his juice money, you sent Rudolph to collect. Need some protection? Rudolph was your reindeer. Like to bet on sports? Talk to Rudy. Need someone to go away? Rudy will make that happen. When Joseph Kennedy needed a friend to count the votes in Cook County for his son John in the 1960 presidential election, who did he call? Rudolph.

Wait a minute...that's not Rudolph's story. Not at all. That's just a perverse rehashing of Chicago stereotypes and a maligning of Chicago's legitimate businessmen's associations. I won't stand for that.

Here's the real story behind Rudolph...

A Sylverados Christmas

2009-12-19T14:49:00.001-06:00

This is something a little different and cute that was sent along to me and now I'm sending it along to you.

Hardrock, Coco and Joe

2009-12-18T06:49:00.003-06:00

I am a child of television. Not quite raised by tv, as I had a stay at home mom, but still, I spent a lot of time in front of the tv. TV has, sadly, provided me with some of my favorite childhood memories.

Each day, before school, as I was eating my sugar cereal, I would watch a kids show hosted Ray Rayner, a man in a jumpsuit with notes pinned to it. Apparently, one of the notes told him to play this 1950s cartoon every Christmas. Everyone around my age has seen this piece of stop action animation and, even if they don't admit it, there's a part of them that loves Hardrock, Coco and Joe.

Bob Dylan "Must Be Santa"

2009-12-17T06:32:00.001-06:00

It's the first in our series of WTF Christmas Videos. Yes, Virginia, there is a Dylan in this video. Apparently, Bob likes to wear wigs.

Alvin and the Chipmunks "The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don't Be Late)"

2009-12-16T06:31:00.002-06:00

Alvin? ALVIN!!!

From the early 1960s tv show.

Julian Lennon and James Scott Cook "Lucy"

2009-12-15T06:39:00.002-06:00

Ok, enough with the Bah Humbuggery.

Today is a brand new day and we can maybe get back into a more seasonal frame of mind. One of the things Christmas is about is the act of giving. While this isn't, strictly speaking, a "Christmas video," the intent of it is all about giving.

Julian Lennon and James Scott Cook collaborated on this song, "Lucy," and if you download it on iTunes 100% of the proceeds will be shared by the Lupus Foundation of America and Saint Thomas's Lupus Trust in Great Britain.

Christmas Comes But Once a Year (Thank God)

2009-12-14T08:35:00.001-06:00

Here's the thing: For whatever reason, I can't get the embed codes to work for videos that I had planned to use for today, and I just don't feel like picking any other videos, so there. No Christmas videos for you.

Lewis Black on Christmas

2009-12-13T10:07:00.000-06:00

Straight No Chaser "The Christmas Can-Can" animated version!

2009-12-12T10:06:00.001-06:00

Uhhmmmm....there seems to be an animated version of "The Christmas Can-Can." It's cute.

"Eight Days of Hanukkah"

2009-12-11T06:20:00.004-06:00

To celebrate the beginning of Hanukkah here's a brand new song, "Eight Days of Hanukkah," co-written by Madeline Stone, a Jewish woman who writes contemporary Christian music in Nashville, and Orin Hatch. The Republican Senator Orin Hatch of Utah. A Mormon. It is sung by Rasheeda Azar, a Syrian-American from Terre Haute, IN.

Again, this is one of those things where you can rightly say, "Only in America."

Eight Days of Hanukkah from Tablet Magazine on Vimeo.

Read the story behind the song by Jeffrey Goldberg.

A (Brief) History of Christmas

2009-12-10T06:38:00.001-06:00

Straight No Chaser "The Christmas Can-Can"

2009-12-09T06:28:00.001-06:00

The Rockettes they ain't.

War Is Over (If You Want It)

2009-12-08T08:35:00.005-06:00

Twenty-nine years ago today John Lennon was shot down like a dog in the street by an obsessive crazy with a hand gun. Odd to write that so much time has passed because it seems like it happened last year, it seems so close, yet there you are, time flies in the blink of an eye.

There are all sorts of elements to the tragedy of someone dying, especially someone so relatively young, at the age of 40. Gun shot or heart attack or addictions, there are layers of sadness to any loss. In the case of Lennon, he was a husband and a father. That's on the more important, personal scale of things. On a grander scale, he was a beloved musician. A Beatle, a solo artist, a composer. But he meant so much more than those things somehow to so many. Lennon stood for something. For peace, for love, for choosing to be yourself, whatever those things may really mean to people. The loss of Lennon, to his fans, was a great loss in a lot of different ways, musically, creatively, spiritually.

When I watched the interviews on this video from "The Beatles TV" blog, I noticed toward the beginning John puts a record on what was then probably a pretty high tech stereo. The thought then occurred to me: what would John Lennon have made of today's technological world. How would he be dealing with the technology we have now, the digital world, the iTunes world, the computer in every home that allows everyone to be an artist in a easier, quicker way.

What he would would have done with this vast world of technology. The fun he would have had. Creating blogs and websites, twittering and tweeting and posting. The chance to create and share his creations with the universe. That's what Lennon lost along with his life, and the chance to experience those creations is what his fans lost.

Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra "Marshmallow World"

2009-12-07T08:42:00.002-06:00

I don't know what it is about these two singing a silly Christmas-time song, but it puts a smile on my face. You just know once the song was over, they were gonna have a swell time, amply aided by a fully stocked bar and some swingin' chicks.

A Very Plaxico Christmas

2009-12-06T13:28:00.004-06:00

Sunday is the day of the Lord. And Football.

What better way to warm the cockles of one's heart during the Christmas season than to watch large men chasing after other large men, one of whom happens to have a ball in his hands, and then the large men all try to cripple each other.

The only thing imbued with more Christmas spirit than the American love of football is the American love of the firearm.

Put those two things together, football and firearms (plus a little alcohol for good measure), and what do you get? A Very Plaxico Christmas.

Poor Plaxico. The guy shoots himself in the leg and he gets more time than some people who actually shot someone other than themselves. Such are the vagaries of American jurisprudence, that those who hurt themselves spend a longer time in prison than those who hurt others, particularly if there's a prosecutor with designs on higher office involved.

Try to have a merry Christmas anyhow, Plaxico.

"Santa's Workshop"

2009-12-05T10:18:00.004-06:00

Today is the birthday of one Walt Disney. He was born on this day in 1901 in the fine city of Chicago. Disney began making animated short films, and from a small mouse enormous things came. From shorts to full length features to small amusement parks to giant theme parks to an entertainment empire, that's Disney.

In many Disney films, somebody or something has got to die. There will be grief. But in "Santa's Workshop," made in 1932 and re-colored in 2006, there is nothing but joy and happiness and one really, really jolly freakin' Santa. This is one happy dude. And how could he not be, surrounded as he is by elves and toys and the coming of Christmas Eve when he can spread joy to the world.

The Who "Christmas" and "The Acid Queen"

2009-12-04T16:39:00.003-06:00

Ok, so this video is not really a "Christmas" video, despite the name of the song. But still, you're getting classic Who from the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival, and that's a pretty good Christmas gift, isn't it? Not a whole lot of better live bands than the Who in their prime.

Band Aid "Do They Know It's Christmas"

2009-12-03T08:37:00.003-06:00

This is a guilty pleasure. Rock stars, or what passed for them in 1984, getting together to help starving Africans was a noble concept, but let's face facts, these celebrity relief efforts can turn out to be kind of lame. Strangely though, this song has held it's own, and still sounds good 25 Christmases later.

Origin of the word "Christmas"

2009-12-02T10:11:00.003-06:00

This woman has so much to teach the world. Truly a great educator.

But seriously folks, how American is this? A Russian philologist (her website says she has two degrees in philology, so who am I to argue?) with a penchant for silicone (I'm only speculating here) and a sense of humor comes to the land of capitalism and makes a killing teaching what I assume is a mostly male audience the origin of English words.

You have to love this country. God bless us, everyone.

Perry Como "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas"

2009-12-01T10:15:00.003-06:00

Holy mackerel, it's December 1st! How did this happen?!? Where did the year go? It was summer just yesterday, I swear it.

It's time to start thinking about Christmas. Actually, I have been already. I've been playing Christmas music at home since the end of September. I find it comforting. It's been a troubled year and I'm a trouble man with a troubled mind.

Still, even though I've been listening to Christmas carols and "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing" for a few months now, December snuck up on me. I have a feeling Christmas Eve will be here sooner than I'll be ready for.

That's ok. I'll enjoy the holiday season anyway. And even though it's sunny and 50 degrees out, it is beginning to look a lot like...the same Perry Como video that I've played on December 1st for the last few years.

Churchill

2009-11-30T09:50:00.004-06:00

He was the man who invented the term "Iron Curtain" to describe the Soviet Union he so despised; he warned sleeping England, and the world, of the Nazi threat, only to be ignored until it was almost too late. He was Winston Churchill and he was born on this day in 1874. A man of contradictions, he was a soft, pink, pudgy fellow who enjoyed cigars and alcohol but distinguished himself under fire as both a soldier and war correspondent; he had a lisp but overcame that to become an orator who comforted Britain during the Blitz and inspired the British people to fight to save not just England but free people everywhere. During England's darkest hour, Churchill poked, prodded and cajoled President Roosevelt to lend aid and become the arsenal of democracy. Winston Churchill was not just a great leader but a truly interesting human being, the likes of which we may never see again.

From No Ordinary Time by Doris Kearns Goodwin:

In the morning, Churchill confronted the President's butler Alonzo Fields. "Now, Fields," Churchill began, his bare feet sticking out below his long underwear, his crumpled bedclothes scattered on the bed, the floor strewn with British and American newspapers, "we had a lovely dinner last night but I have a few orders for you. We want to leave here as friends, right? So I need you to listen. One, I don't like talking outside my quarters; two, I hate whistling in the corridors; and three, I must have a tumbler of sherry in my room before breakfast, a couple of glasses of scotch and soda before lunch and French champagne and 90 year old brandy before I go to sleep at night."

This was a man who knew how to live, I just don't know how he managed to stay awake.

From NPR: Flu Attack! How a Virus Invades Your Body

2009-11-30T09:39:00.001-06:00

Dick and Gary and Friend

2009-11-29T14:59:00.001-06:00

The Muppets "Bohemian Rhapsody"

2009-11-25T21:01:00.001-06:00

Have a Groovy Thanksgiving

2009-11-25T20:51:00.001-06:00

Please note famed character actor M. Emmet Walsh in the Army induction center scene.

Military Tribunals For Enemy Combatants

2009-11-20T11:16:00.005-06:00

We are a nation at war.

You may already think you know that because we have soldiers fighting and dying in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But the really big war we are in, the war which will truly decide the fate of free people throughout the world, is the war against Islamist terrorism. This is a war that encompasses more than just Iraq and Afghanistan. It truly is a World War. However, we don't seem to really acknowledge it as such.

Even though Attorney General Eric Holder stated "we are at war" while defending his decision to prosecute the 9-11 co-conspirators in civilian court, most Americans, and especially most American elected officials, don't grasp the seriousness or the enormity of this war against Islamist terror.

The heads of al Qaeda mince no words when they say they want to bring about the death of infidels. In case you don't know, anyone who doesn't share exactly the same beliefs as them is an infidel. Homegrown terrorists also make no bones about the fact that they would like to see infidels in this country murdered.

So, like it or not, believe it or don't, we are at war with Islamist terrorists on a worldwide scale. Which makes it tough for me to understand why the masterminds of the most deadly attack by a foreign foe on American soil should be tried in civil court.

On this day in 1945 the Nuremburg trials began. This was a military tribunal set up to prosecute Nazi war criminals. The Islamist terrorists who plotted to kill people in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and elsewhere on September 11, 2001, were, and still are, enemies of the United States of America. They were enemy combatants engaged in warfare. They are war criminals. They should be put on trial before a military tribunal, just as our military enemies were put on trial sixty-four years ago. It is the right thing to do.

Do You Think There Are Secret Photos of Margaret Thatcher in a Bikini Somewhere?

2009-11-20T10:18:00.004-06:00

I've never been one to be politically correct. It's not my style. Political correctness is an attempt to kill freedom of speech and freedom of thought. "Sexist" in one of those PC words that gets bandied about, and when I hear it I know the PC Police are on patrol and and wagging their fingers at someone who has probably done nothing wrong.

Yet...let's face it. There are times when people, or institutions, or countries, engage in bad, or at the very least, unfair behavior. Sarah Palin says the cover photo Newsweek magazine has of her in a running outfit is sexist. And she's right.

As a heterosexual male, I can appreciate a photo of an attractive woman. And from a merely aesthetic standpoint I'd much rather see a picture of Palin in running shorts than just about any other politician I can think of. If you can remember the vision from the 1990s of Bill Clinton and his pasty white thighs revealed by too-short running shorts as the president jogged from one Washington, DC McDonald's to the next, you can understand what I'm saying here.

But the Newsweek article isn't about Palin the runner, or Palin the MILF, or anything else equally inane and superficial. It is about Palin the political commodity. The photo was taken for a interview Palin did for Runner's World, and Newsweek didn't even have authorization to use it. But use it they did, knowing full well it would cause commotion and get them some much needed attention.

Remember, after the presidential election, Barack Obama and his family went on vacation to Hawaii? There were some photos of a shirtless Obama enjoying the ocean. Granted, he did not pose for these pictures, but they exist nonetheless. Imagine if Newsweek or Time were to do a piece on the Obama White House and used one of those photos on the cover. There would be an uproar of tremendous proportions. Democrats and the liberal Left would be up in arms, decrying the impropriety and the sexism of using flesh to sell a news magazine. Where is the uproar, especially from the so called feminists, now that a conservative Republican is being exploited based on her gender so that a magazine can sell more copies?

Therein lies the hypocrisy in America today. Therein lies the quirkiness of the American mind, a mind that can venerate women at the same times it degrades them, a mind that accepts powerful women in the home or in the schools, or even in the corporate boardrooms but is still manifestly uncomfortable with powerful political women, especially if they happen to be attractive as well.

We may live in a "post-racial" nation, but we are hardly post-sexist, not by a long shot. What else can you say about a country that seems light years from having a female president when other countries, some with fairly male-oriented traditions, have had women become presidents or prime ministers. Great Britain, India, Pakistan, Israel, Indonesia, the Philippines, all have had female heads of state. The US doesn't seem like it's on track to have one for a long, long time.

Perhaps Americans, both male and female, just can't accept, or prefer not to, a woman who is both attractive and successful. Don't give the beautiful too much power, they're not that bright you know. Once upon a time, at least in the world of tv commercials, we lauded the woman who could bring home the bacon and fry it up in the pan. That doesn't seem to be the case anymore.

Run, Sarah, Run

2009-11-17T21:23:00.002-06:00

Would it be so wrong to have a president that's hot? I think not.

"So easy to look at, so hard to define..."

always nice to see Billy Preston, innit?

2009-11-12T22:00:00.000-06:00

Hands Up, Tubby! You're Under Arrest!

2009-11-10T14:37:00.003-06:00

This is one of the strangest articles I've come across, odd enough that I wonder if it's really true. There is a law in Japan that mandates waist sizes for it's citizens. Apparently the Japanese government, having solved all other problems, decided that the Japanese have been gaining too much weight in the last few decades and felt the need to decree a maximum waist size. It's 33.5 inches for men, 35.4 inches for women. With a 36-inch waistline, I would be a lawbreaker. And proud of it.

Say what you will about the decline of the United States in the 21st century, our beloved legislators have yet to make fat illegal. US citizens are still allowed to eat what we want, when we want (although let's hope no Congressmen find out about this bit of Japanese insanity - who knows what they'll try to do).

Some Americans may be overweight, but all Americans are still free.

There Will Be Repercussions

2009-11-06T16:32:00.004-06:00

What happened at Fort Hood on Thursday will have repercussions.

The shooter (do I need to say alleged?), Nidal Milak Hasan, was a person who was throwing up red flags as he moved along in life, but the flags didn't seem to get any notice from anyone with authority to do something.

As a psychiatric intern at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Hasan himself required counseling after having "difficulties" with patients.

Hasan was possibly the author of pro-terrorist internet postings.

Hasan was, by my reckoning, an Islamist, a hater of what America is doing in the war on terror, and he was "very vocal" about his feelings that the war on terror was really a war against Islam. He even got into arguments with other soldiers over his opinions.

How is it that this guy not only got promoted by the Army, but was being sent at Afghanistan to treat soldiers serving there?

One Army colonel described Hasan's work as "excellent." That may have been the case, but he was also apparently a troubled man and he should have been paid closer attention to. Any excuse that there is just isn't the money or the manpower to investigate everybody just isn't going to cut it anymore. There's plenty of tax money being paid by plenty of Americans and we should expect better, better from the military, better from our government.

The future will bring out politicians who will try to exploit this tragedy, but there will also be honest and concerned public servants who will hopefully push to make sure measures are taken so that something like this never happens again, but also to implement some way to investigate factions within our own military who may actually be our enemy.

Not So Super Tuesday

2009-11-04T09:00:00.002-06:00

Republicans won the governors seat in Virginia and New Jersey yesterday in the not so super Tuesday elections. Some pundits (I'll bet "pundit" looks good on the resume and business card) say this shows a tread towards the Republicans gaining back ground they lost in the 2008 elections and could show trouble for the Democrats in the 2010 mid-terms.

My reaction to yesterdays voting is "so what?" A lot can change in a year, so what happened yesterday is irrelevant to what problems voters are going to be facing 12 months from now. If more people are unemployed or underemployed, they are going to be ticked off at whoever's in power. If things are better, good for the party in power.

And what happens in 2010 will be irrelevant in terms of the 2012 presidential election. The Republicans swept to Congressional power in 1994 and Bill Clinton still managed to get reelected in 1996. All that matters on election day is what kind of mood the voters are in when they cast their ballot. Mood is everything, much more important than part or ideology.

I also saw a pundit (do people really refer to themselves as "pundits;" "Hi, I'm Mary. I'm a doctor." "Hi, I'm John. I'm a pundit." "You're a what now?") on tv this morning saying independent voters are trending towards Republicans, and this could have an effect in 2010. This guy needs to look up the word "independent."

I consider myself not just independent politically, but independent in thought as well. I'm married to a woman, not any ideology. Independents will vote for whoever seems to be the best candidate in an election. Speaking for myself, increasingly I prefer candidates from outside the two party system. Independents don't trend.

I Got a Rock

2009-10-31T13:32:00.001-05:00

And the horse you rode into town on

2009-10-28T13:48:00.002-05:00

You know, some days I'm just feeling down, a little mopey, a little like a guy who's fallen off the wagon and imbibed in way too much sugar. And yes, there is a sugar wagon.

I was feeling blue until I read about Arnold, King of Caleefornia, and his creative use of the veto pen. Now this just cheered me right up.

Apparently, when Governor Schwarzenegger vetoes a bill, he sends it back to the legislature with a message attached as to why he vetoed it. In this case, a bill to expand the financing power of the Port of San Francisco was sponsored by an assemblyman who had heckled the governor at a Democratic fundraiser that Schwarzenegger had been invited to. Perhaps as retaliation, the governator vetoed the bill.

In his message Schwarzenegger wrote something along the lines of what is called an acrostic. An acrostic is a poem in which the first letter of each line, when read in a downward sequence, forms a word. In the governor's case, it was two words, one of which is a "common vulgarity" and the other is "you." This is actually pretty clever for a guy who does not speak English as a first language.

At first, this vulgar barb at a political foe might sound juvenile and petty, and beneath the status of the governor of the most populous state in the nation and the one of the most important economic regions in the world.

But you know what, that's politics. The assemblyman used a bipartisan gesture on Schwarzenegger's part to crap all over him by shouting "you lie" at him (not very original). If you want something from somebody, it's wise to treat them nicely, rather than yelling and acting like a jerk. Unfortunately for the assemblyman and his bill, Gov. Schwarzenegger had the last word. Or two words, really.

The Dave Brubeck Quartet "Blue Rondo a la Turk"

2009-10-23T11:12:00.003-05:00

Suicide weather. That's what we've got here in Chicago. Gray skies and rain, constant rain. I don't know how people can live someplace where it rains a lot, like Seattle.

What was my point now, where was I going with this? Oh yeah. On a quiet morning full of drizzle nothing suited my mood like a little jazz. The Dave Brubeck Quartet fit the bill for that. I listened to them while I ironed the laundry. That being done, I sought out Dave Brubeck on YouTube. And found this: a clip of the quartet from "The Lively Ones," which was apparently a musical variety show in the early '60s. In this video we can see the band perform "Blue Rondo a la Turk" while riding a flying carpet over the highways and byways of Los Angeles. This does beg the question: Why?!? I do not know. But I do know it combines good jazz with a healthy dose of silliness, which cheered me up a bit. Let it rain.

A New Yule Classic? Bob Dylan's "Christmas in the Heart"

2009-10-22T16:00:00.000-05:00

The first thing you need to do is wrap your brain around the fact that Bob Dylan has recorded a Christmas album. The obvious question: Is this some kind of joke that Dylan is playing on his fans? One certainly wouldn’t expect an album chock full of Christmas standards from Dylan. But then again, Dylan has made a long and successful career out of delivering on occasion something that’s not quite expected from him. Also, the matter of the profits from this cd being donated to an organization that feeds the needy leads one finally to believe “Christmas in the Heart” is indeed not a joke.

The second thing you need to wrap your brain around is Dylan’s voice. Whether a fan or not (and if you’re not, you’re probably not going to buy this cd), you understand by now that Dylan’s voice is ravaged. It could be due to age or booze or drugs or cigarettes or all of the above, but over the last 15 or 20 years, Mr. Tambourine Man’s vocals have taken on the quality of glass being fed through a wood chipper. Even for those who love him, the voice can be a little hard to take. Genius or no genius, sometimes it’s just hard to listen to a guy who sounds like he has laryngitis and a severe chest cold.

Having said all that, when you listen to this cd, you realize that Dylan sounds sincere. He’s not trying to pull something over on anyone. This isn’t a slap dash effort. The songs, from “Here Comes Santa Claus” to “O Little Town of Bethlehem” are classics of the season, sung by Dylan with an earnest gusto and performed more than ably by musicians from his current backing band as well as David Hidalgo from Los Lobos. There are even back-up singers, billed as “Mixed Voice Singers,” which gives some respite from the sound of Dylan’s own voice, lest it get to be a bit too much. It is kind of fun, though, to hear him (try to) hit the high notes on a song like “Hark the Herald Angels Sing.”

Dylan sounds downright whimsical on “Winter Wonderland” and “Christmas Island,” which gets a country swing arrangement, and he doesn’t try to overdo it on the ballads like “I’ll Be Home for Christmas;” he just gives those tunes a straight and simple performance. And, really, you gotta give props to anyone who attempts singing “O Come All Ye Faithful (Adeste Fideles)” in Latin as well as English.

The great highlight of the cd, one that’s worth the purchase price alone, is “Must Be Santa.” It is a way upbeat tune that has Dylan singing along with the Mixed Voice Singers and accompanied by Hidalgo on accordion. This is a Christmas song you can get up and polka to.

“Christmas in the Heart” is a noble and worthwhile effort from Bob Dylan. You might not want to play it around anyone who really doesn’t care for Dylan too much; my wife requested that it not be played when she’s at home. And this cd will clear a room full of Bing Crosby fans faster than you can say “Florida orange juice.” Really, anyone who prefers more traditional vocal stylings for their Christmas music won’t like this cd. And let’s be honest here; I’m a Dylan fan, I think he’s a true American genius, but hearing him do “The Christmas Song” didn’t make me run and delete Nat “King” Cole from my iTunes library. Still, I get a strange enjoyment out of “Christmas in the Hear” and, who knows, it may live on to be regarded as a Yuletide classic.

Balloon Boy Hoax

2009-10-18T13:27:00.005-05:00

What do you call parents who have their children lie in order for the parents to garner publicity? You can call them bad parents for starters, but there is more to this story, this Balloon Boy story, than for the parents to be simply referred to as "bad." What about whores? They want to make money by selling themselves in a way that degrades them as humans. That makes them whores. The state of Colorado may soon call them convicts, if indeed are charges are brought against them and they are convicted. People throughout the country were praying for the safety of Balloon Boy. In general people are believers and are willing to take people at face value. In this case the believers had their emotions manipulated by sick people with twisted souls. So I think that settles it: we can call Balloon Boy's parents sick, twisted manipulating whores-soon-to-be-convicts. Doesn't exactly roll off the tongue but it will have to do.

"But what about the children?" all the ladies cried. You have to feel bad for the children. They are being raised, for the time being at least, by knuckleheads. What kind of chance do they have to not be knuckleheads themselves. We can only hope that they turn out smarter than their parents and as well adjusted as they can be.

Michael Buble "Haven't Met You Yet"

2009-10-14T16:18:00.003-05:00

The sugar high has become a sugar low, so I needed a little something to cheer me up. This video does the trick. Who amongst us can stay depressed when he hears a perfect pop concoction like this?

I have questions, though.

Do you think Michael Buble does his own grocery shopping?

How come spontaneous yet choreographed dancing never breaks out when I'm at the grocery store?

It's Johnny's Birthday, It's Johnny's Birthday!

2009-10-09T11:21:00.002-05:00

Whatta Ya Gotta Do to Get a Nobel Peace Prize Around Here? Nothing, Apparently

2009-10-09T11:02:00.005-05:00

Hey! Guess who won the Nobel Peace Prize? Yes, our president, who took office only two weeks before the nominating deadline. Very interesting. Let's be honest: Barack Obama won the Prize for not being George W. Bush. With less than half a month of presidential and peace-making experience, Obama got a prize for what it is hoped that he would do, rather than what he has actually done. Kind of the way he won the presidential election, on the basis of ethereal hope rather than cold, hard fact.

Mickey Kaus, writing in Slate magazine, thinks it would be a good idea for President Obama to decline the honor, for a number of very sound reasons.

Oh, Quicksdraw!

2009-10-06T08:42:00.004-05:00

This tickles my funny bone. I don't know why, maybe there's something wrong with me, but Quickdraw McGraw done as a German expressionist film with Peter Lorre is right up my alley. But seriously, who wouldn't want Peter Lorre to do a voice over on their cartoon? It's too bad he's not around to do a guest shot on "The Simpsons."

Anyhoo, found this animation on Merrill Markoe's blog. She dated David Letterman back in the 1980s and makes her "big comment" on Dave's current "situation."

By the by, I don't want to ever again hear Dave talk about having sex. It's just icky. George Clooney wants to talk about getting physical with the women in his life, fine. Salma Hayek wants to talk sex, giddy-up. David Letterman? Please! No more. It's like having an amusing but creepy relative tell tales about what he does behind closed doors. I just don't want to hear it.

That Toddlin' Town

2009-10-05T16:39:00.002-05:00

Found this video on another blog, one by the name of B News, and it is a travelogue from 1948 about the city of my birth, Chicago. It's interesting to note how much has changed, how many more skyscrapers there are now downtown and along the lakeshore, and how many things have passed, like the Stockyards.

The Compound: A Dream, with Illustrations

2009-10-05T14:14:00.018-05:00

I have always wanted a compound. Like the "Kennedy compound." If the Kennedy's can have a compound, why can't I have one too?

It would be nice to have a house somewhere in the woods, but it would have to be near a body of water. I like the woods. I like water. Especially when the water comes in bodies.

But I like the beach as well. A compound on the beach would be nice. With a view of the water. A body of water. A large body of water.

My compound would need a name. I can't call it the Kennedy Compound. That's already taken. And my name is not Kennedy. So it wouldn't make any sense to call it the Kennedy Compound. Maybe I'll just call it Area 13. Area 51 has been done. That's so 20th century. Area 13 sounds cool. People think 13 is an unlucky number. But you're not unlucky if you have your own compound. Although, I guess, the Kennedy's can be unlucky at times.

A compound needs buildings. We need buildings to live in, and sleep in, drink and eat and do nothing in.

But I'm not handy. I don't know how to build a building.

Maybe I could find something already built.

This looks nice. It's already built. It's got a modern look. Modern, if it were 1960. It's retro chic, let's say. And it's got a tower.

The tower has stairs for me to climb. And it's got an antenna. It will get signals from, well, you know from where. From there. They are out there. And they are communicating with me.

I will grant you, the place is a bit of a fixer-upper. I said I'm not handy. But I could learn.

When I live on the compound with my fellow compounders, with my Family (come to me my babies), I will need to let the paparazzi know they are not welcome. No paparazzi, nor Feds (G-Men if you will), nor gawkers or stalkers. But I will welcome the Census takers. I want to be counted. Everyone else will be have to stay away.

A compound, to truly be a compound, must have more than one building.

As I walk the grounds of my compound (I will often use the word "compound" because I like it so much) I will need on occasion to take shelter. From the sun. Or the rain. Or maybe I will just need a place to have a picnic. A picnic shelter on the beach.

I would like my compound to have a lot of bathrooms. Any compound worth it's salt should have a lot of bathrooms. They will be dispersed to various points on the compound grounds.

In the evenings, when the day is done, we will dine on sushi while sitting on the Upside Down Aquatic Gallows Poles. Then we will swim, but only after we wait an hour.

This Dream Ends Here.

Caring Republicans? They're a Long Time Passing

2009-10-04T20:15:00.005-05:00

Soooo...just what is the Republican plan for health care reform?

There isn't one. Nor will there be one. The Republicans prefer simply to be negative rather than to engage the Democrats in a positive way.

Once upon a time, Republicans actually cared about America and Americans. Barry Goldwater cared about the environment. Dwight Eisenhower cared enough about America that he warned us all about the danger of a overly powerful military-industrial complex. Theodore Roosevelt feared the effect monopolies had on everyday, working Americans. Even Richard Nixon cared enough about the future of our country to create the Environmental Protection Agency.

Where are these Republicans now? They aren't to be found. The caring GOP of yesteryear has been replaced by a corporatist party concerned with nothing more than power. (The Democrats aren't much better, but that's a discussion for another day.)

So what do we do now? Maybe Public Enemy was right. We've got to Fight the Power. We can all start by writing our Congressional representative and our Senators and demanding a government option. With e-mail and faxes, the ability to quickly communicate with our elected officials has never been easier. So get busy. Our lives may actually depend on it.

Michael Buble "I've Got the World on a String"

2009-10-01T21:38:00.002-05:00

He's Sinatra without the menace. Sinatra if Sinatra had a French Canadian accent. Sinatra if Sinatra had the ability to be a goofy ham bone. He's not Sinatra, he's his own man. He's Michael Buble.

Things I Need to Get Off My Chest: What Sucks and What Does Not

2009-10-01T20:20:00.004-05:00

-Why Republicans suck: The minority party (the one without any actual minorities in it) is criticizing President Obama for going to Copenhagen to promote Chicago's bid for the 2016 Olympics. The House Minority Leader says there's too many important things here at home to work on, like health care. Last time I checked, the Republicans haven't done a damn thing about health care other than lying to the American public about how health care reform is actually the beginning of the Fascist dictatorship Obama wants to be the head of.

-Why President Obama sucks: I don't know why the Republicans are complaining about Obama leaving the country for a day. Obama has been in-country all summer and he doesn't seem to have lifted a finger to get the health care deal done, other than to give a nice little speech, which fell on deaf Republican ears. If he had actually turned the screws, the bill would be a done deal by now.

-Why Democrats suck: You guys are in the majority now. You control the White House and both houses of Congress. Time to stand up and do what's right and shove through a health care bill with a public option. (Single payer would be better, but I hesitate to ask for too much from you.) You don't need Republican support and no matter how many concessions you make you will never get it. So do what's right.

-Why this situation sucks for Democrats and for all of us really: If a decent health care bill is not passed Barack Obama will be a one term president and we'll be stuck with some knucklehead like Mitt Romney in the White House. Progressives, liberal Democrats and independent voters put Obama in the presidency and without genuine health care reform most of those voters are lost. Keith Olbermann, of MSNBCBSABCDEFG, has already floated the idea that without the reforms Obama promised a progressive may rise up to run against the president in the 2012 Democratic primaries.

-Why Chicago doesn't suck: It's a great city. Like any metropolis, it has it's problems, but it is overall a pretty darn good town. It deserves the Olympics. We will do it right and the city, and all of America, will look good.

Jenny and the F-Bomb

2009-09-28T14:49:00.003-05:00

Apparently a "Saturday Night Live" cast member by the name of Jenny Slate uttered the f-bomb during one of the skits this past weekend. (Considering that the word "freakin' " was used excessively throughout the sketch, one had to figure that a different f-word might easily pop out of a performers mouth.) I have to admit I had the program on tv but I wasn't paying attention to it. The sketch in question was one of the many on this show that are in general too awful to watch, so I started reading the newspaper (yes, I'm one of the few left who do that).

The really amazing thing about "Saturday Night Live," other than it's longevity (it's entering it's 35th year), is that in the course of one evening you can go from a bit that's really funny, as the "Weekend Updates" usually are, to a whole slew of bits that just stink so badly I have to turn away.

The New Rod the Mod

2009-09-27T00:31:00.001-05:00

A unique spin on the typical Rod Blagojevich (D-Land of Corruption) interview, brought to us by WGN radio talk show host John Williams.

Dog Fighting and Day Care

2009-09-23T16:33:00.004-05:00

The ignorant and violent nature of mankind should have ceased to amaze me long ago, but here I am being amazed again.

Cook County, Illinois Sheriff's Police raided a home in Maywood, a suburb of Chicago, and broke up a dog fighting ring.

This same home was also used as a day care facility.

Dog fighting and day care.

It's bad enough to run a dog fighting operation. It's a sick, twisted "sport" for those who get their hard-on's from inflicting cruelty and suffering on animals. It just heaps more garbage on the dung heap to have a day care in the same building where animals are tortured. This is a perfect example of the ignorance and cruelty of adults being taught to children.

(Are these alleged humans from the same human race that also gave us the Beatles and van Gogh and Martin Luther King, Jr? What is it about us that we humans can produce such drastically diverse creatures as Adolph Hitler and Mother Teresa, dog fighters and animal shelter operators?)

So, what to do with these Don King's of the dog world? You might not want to ask me. In my world, if I were king, litterbugs would be subject to the death penalty, so I may perhaps judge on the harsh side. Good thing for these dog fighters I'm not king.

World Gone Crazy: Bill O'Reilly Supports Public Option

2009-09-18T14:59:00.002-05:00

Apparently, Bill O'Reilly is a human. Who knew? Who knew there could be an ounce of compassion in this occasionally deranged tv show host? Finding out that the bombastically conservative O'Reilly supports the public option is like finding out the grinch has a heart. Now, if Bill O'Reilly supports a public option, can we just get President Obama to support one too?

The Bauchus health care bill, the one without a public option and no means of decreasing insurance costs, but with a fine for those who choose to remain uninsured, is actually worse than having no health care bill at all. The average, uninsured American would not be able to afford this bill, if it passes in it's current state.

Chalk One Up for Fox

2009-09-16T16:03:00.006-05:00

So, this is what it has come down to: the hate filled white men at Fox News Network get something right. In a big way. Fox sent a couple of skinny white kids to Acorn offices to see how Acorn workers would react to say, helping the youngsters set up a house of prostitution. Well, not only did the Acorn people not have a problem with prostitution, they didn't seem to have a problem with child prostitutes either when it was mentioned that the "pimp" would be bringing underage Latin American girls to work for him.

Couple things come to mind right away: If you watch the video, the young man dressed as a "pimp" couldn't be more goofy or fake looking. I mean, really, a fur coat in the middle of summer? And this fooled the nuts at Acorn? For that alone they should have been fired. Also, you have to give props to Fox News for exposing just how awful some of the people working at Acorn are. An investigation needs to happen at a Federal level before we give these people one more cent of tax payer money. Finally, I have to give a shout out to the people at the Daily Show, frequent critics of the angry old guys at Fox, for acknowledging the good that Fox did with this story.

The Health Insurance Racket

2009-09-14T14:32:00.001-05:00

The Truth Behind Public Option

2009-09-14T08:18:00.000-05:00

After 9-11: What Could Have Been

2009-09-11T08:13:00.005-05:00

9-11 has rolled around again, as it will every year until time rolls no longer. With this day comes the inevitable grief and sadness. We all know what happened, no American could forget that. We all live with the tragedy. There is grief and there is sadness and there is great frustration.

The mastermind behind the act is still free to roam the earth and that's because the Cowboy in charge at the time talked it, but did not walk it. He had attention deficit disorder and took his eyes off the prize, the real prize not the one they found in a spider hole.

On September 11, 2001 George W. Bush was at a crossroads in history.

Go down the path of FDR and Churchill and rally the free world to the fight against terrorism, which is truly a global problem just as the Nazis were in the dark decade before World War II. The days after 9-11-01 saw more sympathy and solidarity for the US than there ever had been before and there may never be again. Thus, the time to unite the world was then. The time to conquer the enemies of freedom and democracy and civilization itself was then, at that moment.

Had that path been taken George W. Bush would now be thought of as one of the greatest presidents ever, perhaps one of the great world leaders of history.

Instead, he choose the Cowboy path, talking tough through gritted teeth, with eyes narrowed into slits. "Fer us or agin' us." But a weak cowboy he was. He told us all to go shopping. Go to the malls, else the terrorists win. He removed a dictator from Iraq, which was a good thing, but it was a diversion, ultimately a much bigger and more distracting diversion than Bush thought it would be. It took US away from the hunt for Osama bin Laden, and the creation of a world united to destroy Islamist terrorism forever.

Bush took us down the path that led to distrust of American motives and a world that tries to pretend the problem of Islamist terrorism is no real problem at all.

George W. Bush is a tale of what could have been. That's one of the greatest tragedies of 9-11. What could have been.

Not Only Was He the Walrus, but a Beauteous Lady As Well

2009-09-10T08:52:00.004-05:00

Here I am, trying to capitalize on the new Beatlemania, a day after the release of Beatles Rock Band, a day late and a dollar short, as always. But what the heck, here's a little something different I came across on a blog dedicated to Beatles tv appearances. Here our heroes do Shakespeare, in a way that proves the English are quite daft.

Way Gone

2009-09-10T08:46:00.003-05:00

This is a pretty funny video. The dancing is, like, really wiggy, man. This is the original version of "Gone, Gone, Gone." While Robert Plant and Alison Krauss did a nice job doing this song, the Everly Brothers were just a bit more fun.

Not Such a Grand Old Party

2009-09-10T08:30:00.004-05:00

This is what it's come down to. A member of the Grand Old Party, the party of Lincoln, Roosevelt (Teddy), Goldwater and Eisenhower, heckling the President of the United States during a speech before a joint session of Congress. Very nice.

All politicians and political parties lust for power, but the Republicans and their epic-level pouting over their loss of power has reduced them to acting like shrill, almost insane but highly dangerous 2-year-olds in the midst of a violent tantrum. They should be ashamed. Lincoln would disown these people.

The Chicago Way

2009-09-09T14:13:00.005-05:00

Barack Obama has so far been a far worse president than I would have thought, and it's because of the things he hasn't done rather than the things I thought he would do. Maureen Dowd of the New York Times nicely sums up in this column just how lame the president and the Congress-controlling Democrats have been, particularly on the health care issue.

As a native Chicagoan I find it embarrassing that President Obama is thought of as one of us. No Chicagoan would put up with the treatment that this guy has tolerated. Republicans and blue dog Democrats have been kicking Obama in the nuts all summer long and he's taken it until now, tonight, when he addresses Congress, for him to react.

A true Chicagoan, at the first sight of a skirmish, would have put up his dukes and said, with a contemptuous scowl, "Bring it on," and then would have administered some good old fashioned ass whooping. "He pulls a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours in the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That's the Chicago way."

Instead, Obama just took it, and didn't even appear to get the least bit angry. Perhaps he was waiting for the right time for "civil discourse" but that is not possible in this time of insanity. We need a fighting president, not a school marm.

Obama was born in Hawaii. Maybe they don't angry there, but I doubt it. I don't what planet this emotionless Obama is from, but it isn't Planet Chicago.

Screwed: Me and You, the Rest of America and Health Care

2009-09-09T08:30:00.004-05:00

My plan was to do some research on health care in America, how much we spend on it in this country, how good or bad is the insurance industry, how do we compare health-wise to the rest of the industrialized world.

I'm way too lazy to do all that. And it would be boring to do, looking up all those statistics and facts and what not and then compiling them into a readable article. Impossible. Who gives a fuck about all that stuff?

Yes, I know it's important, but it's dull and people don't really want to take time for a serious look at the facts of health care in America. If they did, debate on the subject would not have been seized by loudmouths on the insurance lobby payroll who are trying to convince the dim amongst us that Uncle Sam will be chairing Death Panels that will vote to put your ailing grandma out to sea on an ice floe that just broke away from a larger ice mass that is melting because of the climate change that conservatives tell us isn't occurring. If grandma is lucky she'll freeze to death before that starving polar bear that's swimming toward her can get up on the ice and have her for dinner. But I digress.

So I'm just going to tell you what I know already without having to look anything up:

I'm screwed.

So are you.

So is the rest of America. We're all screwed. It's just a matter of the degrees of screwedness. (I just made a word up!)

It doesn't matter what kind of legislation is passed regarding health care reform, whether there is a public option or co-ops or a Health Care Fairy who will wave a magic wand from sea to shining sea to keep us all safe, we are all screwed. It's just a matter of how screwed are we going to be.

If the status quo remains, sooner rather than later the Average American who has to buy their own health insurance will have to choose between paying the ever increasing premium on that insurance or buying groceries and paying the rent or mortgage. The Average American will have insurance but will be homeless and starving.

If the Average American happens to have a job, a rare thing these days, he may get insurance through his employer. But insurance costs the employer money, and more and more frequently the cost is being shouldered by the employee. That is, until the employee is laid off as part of a cost cutting measure, one of those costs getting cut being health insurance for employees. Fewer employees, less money spent on employee insurance.

The public option of health care legislation sounds like a good thing, especially if it covers those many Average Americans who have no insurance at all, something like 40 million people. (There's one of those pesky statistics. Are you still awake? Still reading this, or have you gone off to buy The Beatles Rock Band? Pay attention! Just a couple more paragraphs. I'll make them short, I promise.)

Every American, I believe, should have access to affordable insurance for medical treatment. Anything less makes us less of a Great Nation.

The problem with insurance for Everybody is that Everybody's taxes are going to go up. There's no two ways around that, no matter what any chosen one may promise.

But I've thought about it, and I think we're screwed less, a lot less probably, with a public option than if we let things remain as they are. Bring on the Public Option!

Now we just need a Leader (I can't stress that word enough) who will force this to happen. As brilliant as Barack Obama was at running a campaign to win the presidency is how miserable a job he's done at coming up with a health plan and selling it to Americans. Worse, he can't even get a congress controlled by his own party to play along.

George W. Bush and his henchman, Dick Cheney, rammed a war and a homeland spy program through a Republican congress without a hitch. Why can't Barack Obama do this? Is it because Joe Biden is no Dick Cheney (which he is not)? Or does Obama suffer from Bill Clinton syndrome, and prefers to be liked by everyone rather than effective?

Obama needs to start playing rough with the members of his own party to get this health care with a public option, maybe even a single payer option, done. The Chosen One needs to stop acting like the Chosen One and more like the Chicago-style politician that everybody thinks he is. He isn't, or at least he hasn't been. Way too kid gloves so far, and not enough bare knuckles. If Chicago Mayor Richard Daley were president, the health care bill would have been rammed through a long time ago. Obama is no Daley. Not yet. Can he become one?

That's the only way to succeed here, for Obama to be more Daley and a lot less Clinton. Better still, he needs to be more like our former vice-president. Obama needs to go to Capitol Hill, twist some arms, and if anybody puts up a fight he should go all Dick Cheney on their asses. As for the Republicans, screw them, they're unnecessary. Health care reform can be passed without them, and then the Republicans will look even more obsolete than they look now.

The public option is too important for the future of America for Barack Obama to worry about being liked. When the president goes before Congress tonight he needs to spell out a plan for them to pass and make sure everyone knows they either need to play along or get out of the way.

Indoctrinate This!

2009-09-08T10:00:00.003-05:00

Today is the day. In just over an hour President Obama will attempt to indoctrinate the school children of America. Right in their own classrooms! Not only that, it will all be done on the tax payers dime. Once again, the God fearing, flag pin wearing tax payers of America will be taken for a ride.

The White House claims that President will be talking to the students about the importance of staying in school, doing your homework, and listening to one’s parents. These are all obvious code phrases, direct from the Kremlin’s Big Book o’ Propaganda, for “turn your school into a socialist organizing center,” “study the Communist Manifesto day and night” and “let me know if your parents are Republicans, and if they are don’t cry if they’re taken away suddenly in the night.”

Just moments ago I was listening to one of President Obama’s socialist propaganda tools, also known as mainstream media news radio, and, with the intention, I’m sure, of making this person sound like a crackpot, the station played a quote from an opponent of the President’s speech to the schools (frightening admission: I’m not making up this quote), “I don’t want my child growing up to be a community organizer.”

Right you are, my fellow citizen! We don’t want Obama or anyone else encouraging our children to become involved in the world around them. Community organizing? I think that’s how Stalin got his start. One day, Old Joe was driving senior citizens to the voting booth, the next day all of Eastern Europe was enslaved. It happened just that quickly. That concerned parent was right not to want his child to be a community activist. That’s just not the kind of future we want for America, where people are concerned with each other’s welfare. Welfare? That’s what the president wants us all to be on!

Parents, keep your children home if you don’t agree with President Obama and his politics. What better lesson to teach your children than to completely ignore those with a different point of view and criticize those ignorant enough not to agree with you without actually knowing what they’re going to say.

Stay strong America, stay strong.

John Coltrane "Alabama"

2009-09-03T16:02:00.004-05:00

I've been listening to a lot of John Coltrane lately. Don't know why, I just am. Maybe it's because it fits. The music, the sound, the feel, the depth fits the times we live in. Coltrane expresses with a saxophone the essence of life itself: Joy and Melancholy. Coltrane is a great joy to listen to, especially when he creates an almost free-form sound while retaining a melody. That is Joy. But the sound, the depth of his sound, there you find the blues, you hear Melancholy made into musical notes. Coltrane, gone since the height of the '60s, the Summer of Love, fits the times in which we live now, a time oddly similar to the 1960s with all it remarkable change; we too now live in a time of rapid change, a time of fear and loss, a time of freedom and overwhelming choice, a lot of love and a lot of hate, war and peace, great happiness, great sadness, lots of extremes and extremists. And life goes on, day after day. Joy and Melancholy.

Californian Gives Health Care the Finger

2009-09-03T15:24:00.004-05:00

At a health care reform rally in California, one protester bit a finger off the hand of another protester. Authorities are unsure which person was pro-reform and which was anti-reform. One hopes that both the bitee and the bitten have health insurance to cover the medical costs incurred (if you bite a fellow human, don't you need rabies shots or a tetnus shot or something).

These health care rallies are really getting out of control. The protesters all need to calm down and get a grip. Which will be a bit more difficult for the newly nine-fingered amongst us.

Bob Dylan and the Band "Highway 61 Revisited"

2009-08-30T14:42:00.003-05:00

Bob Dylan with the Band at the Isle of Wight festival in 1969. The video has a nice homemade kinda feel, and Dylan and the boys look like their having a gay ol' hootenanny.

It was on this day in 1966 that Dylan released one of my favorite albums by him, "Highway 61 Revisited."

Is That Bing Crosby? Nope. It's Dylan.

2009-08-27T14:49:00.002-05:00

Wrap your brains around this, kiddies: Bob Dylan is going release his first ever Christmas album. What?!? Yes!! It's true.

Now, before you go making snide little comments, like "Hey, that doesn't sound like Bing Crosby" or "Please, God, don't let him ruin 'Silent Night' for me" or "Is that a weasel being strangled...oh, it's just Dylan singing 'Winter Wonderland'," bear something in mind. The CD, "Christmas in the Heart," to be released October 13, will have all it's artist's royalties going to benefit the charity Feeding America and international charities that provide meals for those in need, and the royalties will be donated to those charities not just at the holidays, but forever. In perpetuity, as they say. (I've looked, but I can't find Perpetuity on a map anywhere.)

I really can't imagine what a Dylan Christmas album is going to sound like, but what he's doing with his earnings is truly special.

Uncle Junior, the Great American

2009-08-25T15:52:00.002-05:00

The bald guy in the Great America commercials looks like Uncle Junior from "The Sopranos." What's with that?

Pearl Jam

2009-08-25T10:42:00.002-05:00

Could you really make jam from pearls? It might be a bit gritty. And how much sugar would you need to make it palatable? What kind of fat content are we talking about here? And what about the cholesterol level in pearl jam?

Health Care: A Riot of My Own

2009-08-25T09:43:00.004-05:00

These people who go to these town hall meetings (hoo boy, were those things a bad idea) and heckle the politicians and generally disturb the peace of normal discourse with rants about Death Panels (oh Sarah, you scamp, look what you've wrought), these people suck. I don't know exactly what their issue is with health care, and I suspect that they don't either. Me thinks they just hate President Obama. And that's ok, that's their right as American to hate and to voice their opinion, no matter how annoying they make themselves.

What I do find much more intriguing than these loudmouths is how upset the liberal media and their Democratic opinion givers got about these emotive outpourings. They criticize the protests by calling them "orchestrated" and "organized." What? An organized protests?!? OMG! The left never did that. Those yippies and hippies in Grant Park in 1968 all just ended up their by coincidence. And moveon.org would certainly never organize anything.

What really frightens the Left is that the kooks on the Right (and calling these people "kooks" is being polite) have figured out how to Take It to the Streets. Now it won't be only sandal-wearing, pony-tailed placard carriers standing on street corners yelling half-truths and outright lies about this, that and the other thing; they'll be joined by protesters who just slipped out of their Brooks Brothers suits and into a neatly pressed t-shirt and chinos, ready to ready to carry signs and yell at politicians.

Cheap Trick "Sick Man of Europe"

2009-08-20T17:25:00.002-05:00

They're Frank's Cookies, We Just Eat Them

2009-08-19T12:58:00.005-05:00

On occasion I like to bake chocolate chip cookies. Well, to be more honest, I don't necessarily enjoy baking all that much but I do enjoy the end product and the accompanying accolades. (I must admit, they are good cookies.) As with many other things in life, a good soundtrack heightens the pleasure of the cookie making experience. Over the years I've baked whilst listening to a variety of music by a variety of artists. Judas Priest is a little too harsh, John Coltrane a little too free form, Neil Young a little too mellow, except, perhaps for parts of Rust Never Sleeps, but, again, that might be a little harsh for the cookie groove. Frank Sinatra seems to work best, particularly A Swingin' Affair, with such hits as "Night and Day" and "Stars Fell on Alabama." Never a bad batch of cookies is baked with Frank singing in the living room.

Just Thinking

2009-08-18T08:37:00.002-05:00

I think Death Panel would be a good name for a heavy metal band.

Happy Anniversary, Woodstock! And Yes, Baby Boomers, It's Too Late to Die Before You Get Old

2009-08-14T13:50:00.005-05:00

It was forty years ago this weekend that the Woodstock Music and Art Festival was held in Bethel, NY. Why wasn't it called the Bethel Music and Art Festival? I don't know. I guess Woodstock just sounded a lot cooler. And what about that bird that couldn't fly straight in the Peanuts cartoon strip? Would he (or was it a she?) have been as cool had he been known as Bethel? I think not. And which came first, the bird in Peanuts or the music festival? Whatever. I'm getting off track. And the track I want to be on is the one thing that I believe deep in my heart of hearts: I would have made an awful hippie.

For one thing, I don't like to be dirty. I don't like dirt on me, especially in it's semi-liquid mud form. Also, I don't like to wear sandals. They were okay for Jesus, but not for me. And I don't think you can chant away the rain. The climactic conditions of Earth simply don't give a rat's ass about the anti-rain vibes you're putting out, man. As for the nudity, I don't much like being naked in public, nor do I wish to see most of my fellow humans naked in public.

I'm wound a little too tight to be a hippie. And I'm a bit of a rebel. When told to not take the brown acid because it's bad, I would have taken it anyway. And what would have been the result of my rebellious behavior? A bad trip, that's what. Although, I gotta be honest, a weekend spent with a hundred thousand people, all rolling around in various states of undress in the mud combined with an extreme lack of bathroom facilities and no showers, that sounds like one giant bad trip to me. Bring on the brown acid.

It's best for someone like me, and all other God fearing Americans, to simply watch the Woodstock movie and dig the groovy music from a safe distance of 40 years. And the movie is well worth watching, if for no other reason than you get to observe a culture, temporary as it was, that at this point in time seems quaint, if not a little naive. Heck, it seemed that way when I first saw the film at the Parkway Theater in Chicago somewhere around 1979. Only ten years after (hey, they were great in the movie!) the event, it looked like it could have happened a hundred years earlier. That's how much things had changed in America and in culture. The tie-dyed dreamers just looked out of touch in the brave new age of punk and New Wave. In a mere decade, we had strayed pretty far from the garden.

But the music, the music was great. If you can sit through Joan Baez singing "Joe Hill" near the beginning of the film (and if you can reach the fast forward on your remote, you won't have to) you are rewarded with stellar performances from many bands that are now considered the bastions of "classic rock": Jimi Hendrix, the Who, Joe Cocker, Santana and Ten Years After ("I'm goin' home...by helicopter"). Even Sha Na Na was good. Why a retro-1950s band was at the penultimate celebration of hippiedom, I don't know but they seemed to have had a good time.

So there you have it. I could never be a hippie, but I do dig their groovy, groovy tunes, man.

Having just watched this clip of the Who doing "My Generation" I have two thoughts (other than Pete Townshend looks really young and stoned here).

1. Does a guy in a white jumpsuit beating his guitar until it makes primal noises, whereupon it is thrown into the audience, represent the peace and love that Woodstock is supposed to be all about?

2. I really like the home grown feeling of the event itself. It seems light years away from the professional, antiseptic shows you get quite often now. The whole thing looks like some kids got together and said, "Hey! Let's put on a show!" built a stage and invited a hundred thousand of their closest friends to watch. It's actually very cool. Still wouldn't have wanted to be there though.

Les Paul 1915-2009

2009-08-13T14:13:00.002-05:00

Les Paul did not invent rock and roll. He did, however, pretty much invent the solid body electric guitar and multi-track recording and was the first to incorporate a variety of what became common place studio recording techniques. Someone else may have invented those things if Les Paul hadn't, but someone else didn't. It was Les Paul. Now imagine rock and roll without a solid body electric guitar. What would guys like Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Pete Townshend and Keith Richards have played?

Why I Dig Sarah Palin

2009-08-11T14:44:00.004-05:00

I like Sarah Palin.

I want her to be president. Desperately.

You know why?

Because this chick is nuts. Sometimes good nuts, sometimes bad nuts, but always, nuts.

Let's be honest: Those four years of her presidency (and, really, I don't think there would be a second term; she'd get bored and want to do something else, like trying to personally invade Canada with her own group of Rough Riders on snowmobiles so the US can seize the Yukon Territory because she heard they heard great moose hunts there, you betcha) would be the most fun ever.

No other president would be able to match Sarah Palin on the wacky meter.

President Palin would be flying around on that Marine helicopter, hunting God's creatures with one of those mounted machine guns you see on those military choppers in war movies. (If there isn't one of those on Marine One now, she'd have one installed.) Meanwhile, the hubby would be having "snow machine" races down the Potomac in the dead of winter, provided it freezes over. Or maybe even if it doesn't. A lot more adventurous if there's some liquidity involved.

And the kids. These would not be the cutesy Obama children (I like them way better than I like their father). The Palin children would be raucous. The White House would get tore up, you just know it. That would be so cool. And don't get me started on the soap opera the Palin's and their extended family and friends are going to be. It will be like four years of an insane reality show in the White House.

As for diplomacy, watch out for a woman who likes to shoot things. Palin is tough. She runs and hunts and skins dead animals and God knows what else she does. If the Russians give us any trouble, she would simply arm wrestle Putin. And win. And then she'd tell him the way things are gonna be from now on, at which Putin would ask her to marry him, because that's the way he is. She would consider it for a second, then tell him to get lost.

But seriously, I do like Sarah Palin. You know why? Really why? Because I believe her to be genuine. If she says it, you can bet she believes what she is saying. When she talks about the America of small towns with small town values, she is being genuine. Unfortunately, she's also being genuine when she talks about Obama's health care "death panels," but that's part of the thoroughly unpolitical politics of Sarah Palin. When people are genuine, and say what they actually believe, you will sometimes hear some weird and wacky things. We'll just have to learn how to deal with it.

So, apart from the insanity that Sarah Palin will bring to the presidency, she will usher in a new era of The Genuine Person. And it will be refreshing.

John Hughes 1950-2009

2009-08-07T09:36:00.003-05:00

John Hughes died yesterday. He was 59, which is a ridiculously young age to leave this earth, and he dropped dead from a heart attack while walking around Manhattan.

Listening to the news and talk shows today, one thing strikes me about Hughes.

John Hughes was underrated. Underrated by film critics and film-goers alike, underrated by me.

I lost track of whatever Hughes has been doing for the last decade or so. Let's face it, he was the scriptwriter for a lot of mediocre (and that's being generous) movies that quite often had numbers in their titles, like "Home Alone 4" and "Beethoven's 5th."

The flipside of that is that he also wrote and/or directed two of my favorite comedies of all time, "Mr. Mom," with the great Michael Keaton, and "Planes, Trains and Automobiles," with Steve Martin and the late and beloved John Candy. Hughes was also responsible for movies about teen-agers that I saw and enjoyed when I was a teen-ager, like "The Breakfast Club" and "Sixteen Candles." Or maybe it was "Pretty in Pink." Some of those Molly Ringwald movies were interchangeable.

Speaking of Molly Ringwald, a lot of actors got their starts or had their first big successes in John Hughes' films, like Macaulay Culkin and pretty much everyone in the Brat Pack.

Hughes never made any great dramas or action films, he apparently never aspired to make a "Citizen Kane" or a "Raging Bull," and maybe that's why he didn't necessarily receive more critical acclaim. John Hughes made comedies. They were light weight but well made and the comedy never had a mean spirit to it. His movies had a gentle, humane quality about them, and that's a quality sorely missing in a lot of today's entertainment.

He's a Bird, He's a Dog, He's a Bird-Dog

2009-08-05T20:05:00.003-05:00

There was good news and bad news for the American journalists, both attractive young women, who were freed from a North Korean prison.

The good news is they were free to return home.

The bad news is they had to take a long plane ride with Bill Clinton.

Can you imagine what he was saying to them? "You girls are smart, but you sure are pretty, too. You know, Hillary spends a lot of time away from home. You ladies should come over one of these days." It's right about then the two reporters, Euna Lee and Laura Ling, started looking around for parachutes.

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I know what you people, at least you liberal, left-leaning Clinton lovers are thinking: Cheap jokes at the expense of a man who helped rescue two innocent Americans from a repressive dictator.

Yeah, so what?

Listen, I like Bill Clinton. Always have. He's a hard man not to like. Clinton, not George W Bush, is the kind of guy I'd like to sit and have a beer with. He's the kind of everyman W could never be. Clinton is the son George H W Bush wished he'd had. I didn't think Bill was a great president, yet I voted for him twice. I wish he were still president sometimes. I certainly did during the Bush years. Whether it was his doing or not, Clinton presided over eight years of peace and prosperity. But, as his Arkansas state trooper guards used to say when Clinton was governor, "He's a hard dog to keep on the porch."

That's the gist of it. Clinton was, and possibly still is, a bird-dog. For whatever good he did as president, he will best be remembered for some icky Oval Office moments involving a cigar, a blue dress, and an intern.

So the cheap jokes will always be there, to his dying day. And then, hopefully, we'll just say nice things about him and let him rest in peace.

Where Have You Gone, Eddie Murphy?

2009-08-04T09:46:00.003-05:00

What happened to this Eddie Murphy? You know, the funny one. The Eddie Murphy who looked like a comedy god, like Elvis in his prime, strutting, preening, wearing a leather suit. Not the Eddie Murphy who makes movies wearing fat suits or talking to computer animated squirrels.

The clip comes to us by way of an Esquire magazine article about entertainers, specifically comedians, even more specifically black comedians, and the handling of the first black president.

"Beer Summit": President Throws Lamest Beer Party Ever; or Really? Bud Light?

2009-07-31T14:04:00.004-05:00

Did you ever see men looking that uncomfortable when there was beer around?

President Obama invited Cambridge, MA police sergeant James Crowley and Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr to the White House to talk over their differences over a couple of beers, and Joe Biden got to tag along.

First of all, who drinks beer in a rose garden? I suppose the argument could be made that beer is good no matter where it's served...ok, I'll go with that.

Still, these fellas looked at the very least a little uncomfortable, particularly Sgt Crowley. Of course, he and Gates were in suits and ties. Hard to let loose and have a heart to heart when you're all gussied up in yer Sunday finest. Obama and Biden choose to forgo the jackets, and the president even rolled up his sleeves. Probably to show he meant business.

I must say though I enjoyed the sight of the White House lackey trotting across the garden and delivering the brews.

And what brews did they choose? President Obama went with Bud Light. Really? Bud Light? Do you really think the president drinks that stuff on a regular basis? I don't think so either. I'm thinking chardonnay in the summer, perhaps a pinot grigio, and pinot noir in the winter, but Bud Light? Only when the cameras are rolling and he wants to look like a common man. Maybe Obama was trying to make nice with Jesse Jackson, whose sons are Anheuser-Busch distributors in the Chicago area. (That's a topic for another day.) I will give the president props for not light up a ciggie, no matter how desperately he may have wanted to. After all, smoking and drinking do go together for some, and it isn't exactly a stress-free time for Obama, so he may have some cravings he couldn't act on. At least not with photographers present.

Professor Gates, being a good temporary New Englander, choose a Sam Adams Light. Sgt Crowley went with a Blue Moon, served with a twist of orange, as is the custom (and a fine custom it is). Vice President Biden was the only one there who looked like he was having a good time, and he was drinking a non-alcoholic beer! Go figure.

Seriously though, shouldn't the president, a Chicagoan by choice, have served a Chicago brewed beer? Would Goose Island have been so bad? A 312 Golden Wheat Ale or a Summertime would have been delightful for an evening in the Rose Garden.

So what did we learn from this learning experience, as the president called it?

Ummmm, nothing much really, other than the media is good at creating distractions from serious issues, like health care and why cable TV costs so much when you get so little.

Happy Birthday (sort of), Bugs Bunny!

2009-07-27T15:29:00.003-05:00

Today is the birthday of one of my childhood heroes, Bugs Bunny. Well, it's sort of his birthday. Mr Bunny had appeared in earlier cartoons. However, "A Wild Hare," released on this day in 1940, was the first Bugs Bunny cartoon (or "animated short" for those of you too grown up to watch a mere cartoon) to feature the speaking voice we've come to know and love, and the first in which Bugs asks Elmer Fudd, "What's up, Doc?"

I'll tell you, just hearing that theme music over the opening credits of the cartoon made me feel good.