Tonight is my last post for a good week or more. I am going to Jamaica, to a small, secluded, boutique hotel by the ocean. Don’t you envy me? I mean, really. While you are sitting at your computer, putting up with your annoying coworkers, I’ll be lounging by the sea, sipping mojitos and worrying about . . . nothing.
I will be out of the news-loop for a week, so my next post will probably have nothing to do with how terrible W is or my latest beef with Republicans. On the upside, the place I’m staying is always crawling with New Yorkers, and God love them, they sure know how to misbehave. So I will keep a travel diary of my journey and I hope to report back with amusing stories of people behaving badly in the Caribbean.
April 28, 2005
April 27, 2005
Lucy Always Pulls the Ball Away
The other day, I was complaining to Ironhuff about the behavior of a friend. He said the best thing I’ve heard in a while. “It’s like Charlie Brown. He thinks that this time Lucy won’t pull the ball away and will let him kick, but she never does. Lucy always pulls the ball away.” I know too many people like that. On the political level, you could say the American public is Lucy. In the 2004 election, they pulled the ball away.
Take a certain pop star who has undergone massive plastic surgery. Put a five-year old in his sprawling mansion and next thing you know, that five-year old is sitting on the witness stand and CSPAN is having a circus. Or Senate majority leaders, especially Republican ones. They always end up resigning over some jackass thing they did (give the current one time).
The media is one big Lucy. They are still talking about the Pope. And they’ll be talking about him next week. They overdo everything: it’s their signature pulling that ball away.
When people are predictable, it’s usually for the worse. Everyone knows the stereotypes. Like the friend who is always getting fired. They’ll tell you it’s never their fault, but how can every company that person has worked for been wrong? Or the pal who is always needing money – and he is well into adulthood? He’ll tell you it is never his fault, that life happens and he is always in debt and the light bill is always two seconds away from being turned off. Meanwhile, said friend is driving a nice car, wearing nice clothes and going out every night. Then there’s always the person who can’t find love, because even though she isn’t much more attractive than a boiled chickpea, she has to haves someone with the looks of George Clooney, except George Clooney is too old looking for her.
I’m struck lately by the number of people I encounter on a daily basis who have something in their lives chronically messed up: finances, career, love, health, or all four and more. Bad junk happens to good people. Those aren’t the folks I’m talking about. We’re talking the repeat offenders. The ones that crap happens to all the damn time – the same ones who will tell you it is never their fault.
You know a few of these folks, admit it. Vegas if full of them. San Francisco, my home before Vegas, is not so polluted with this particular ilk (though for some reason, they have a large number of child molesters, so go figure). People I know in SF have careers, work on their health, try to improve themselves. In Vegas, I’m met more good folks than bad, but good God, have I met some losers in this town. And the one thing that strikes me about them is that not a single one of them is ever willing to say, “you know what? My life is screwed up and it’s my own damn fault. Maybe I shouldn’t have had a kid at 18 and married that two-timing mobster only to be divorced at 19 and penniless with a screaming child attached to my hip.” Or, “Maybe I shouldn’t have called my boss a dyke. That might be why I got fired.” Or, “I shouldn’t have taken out a loan on my house and gambled it all away at the Stardust.” How about, “If I hadn’t smoked for twenty years, perhaps I would not have lung cancer.” And finally, “I bet if I stopped eating fast food daily, I might lose some weight.”
What’s my point? I dunno, I’m a repeat offender at rambling. That’s my version of Lucy pulling that ball away. All I know is that the older I get, the more I encounter people behaving badly as a matter of habit. You want to give them a second chance. You want to believe that they will take responsibility for their bad behavior – this time. But no. They pull that damn ball away.
So if you are thinking of doing a favor for one of these people, take if from Charlie Brown. You are gonna end up on your ass, muttering “good grief.”
Take a certain pop star who has undergone massive plastic surgery. Put a five-year old in his sprawling mansion and next thing you know, that five-year old is sitting on the witness stand and CSPAN is having a circus. Or Senate majority leaders, especially Republican ones. They always end up resigning over some jackass thing they did (give the current one time).
The media is one big Lucy. They are still talking about the Pope. And they’ll be talking about him next week. They overdo everything: it’s their signature pulling that ball away.
When people are predictable, it’s usually for the worse. Everyone knows the stereotypes. Like the friend who is always getting fired. They’ll tell you it’s never their fault, but how can every company that person has worked for been wrong? Or the pal who is always needing money – and he is well into adulthood? He’ll tell you it is never his fault, that life happens and he is always in debt and the light bill is always two seconds away from being turned off. Meanwhile, said friend is driving a nice car, wearing nice clothes and going out every night. Then there’s always the person who can’t find love, because even though she isn’t much more attractive than a boiled chickpea, she has to haves someone with the looks of George Clooney, except George Clooney is too old looking for her.
I’m struck lately by the number of people I encounter on a daily basis who have something in their lives chronically messed up: finances, career, love, health, or all four and more. Bad junk happens to good people. Those aren’t the folks I’m talking about. We’re talking the repeat offenders. The ones that crap happens to all the damn time – the same ones who will tell you it is never their fault.
You know a few of these folks, admit it. Vegas if full of them. San Francisco, my home before Vegas, is not so polluted with this particular ilk (though for some reason, they have a large number of child molesters, so go figure). People I know in SF have careers, work on their health, try to improve themselves. In Vegas, I’m met more good folks than bad, but good God, have I met some losers in this town. And the one thing that strikes me about them is that not a single one of them is ever willing to say, “you know what? My life is screwed up and it’s my own damn fault. Maybe I shouldn’t have had a kid at 18 and married that two-timing mobster only to be divorced at 19 and penniless with a screaming child attached to my hip.” Or, “Maybe I shouldn’t have called my boss a dyke. That might be why I got fired.” Or, “I shouldn’t have taken out a loan on my house and gambled it all away at the Stardust.” How about, “If I hadn’t smoked for twenty years, perhaps I would not have lung cancer.” And finally, “I bet if I stopped eating fast food daily, I might lose some weight.”
What’s my point? I dunno, I’m a repeat offender at rambling. That’s my version of Lucy pulling that ball away. All I know is that the older I get, the more I encounter people behaving badly as a matter of habit. You want to give them a second chance. You want to believe that they will take responsibility for their bad behavior – this time. But no. They pull that damn ball away.
So if you are thinking of doing a favor for one of these people, take if from Charlie Brown. You are gonna end up on your ass, muttering “good grief.”
April 24, 2005
Spain: the New West Hollywood
Spain’s lower house of Parliament has given homosexuals the A OK to marry and adopt screaming brats. Damn! That country is more Catholic than your local St. Mary’s, yet they manage to do something progressive. Meanwhile, US Democrats are digging in their heels and saying no to God-Squading conservatives who want to put scary judges on the bench and turn us all into cookie-cutter Christians.
Thinking about this makes me miss the Seventies. We were more like the Spanish back then, a more liberal, open nation. Carter was in office, and yes, the country was in a recession, but both rock and roll and disco were thriving and punk was just emerging on the scenes. People were dancing machines, whether it was the hustle or moshing. Hair was long (on guys), women were talking liberation and equal rights, and everyone was drinking crappy wine with screw tops. Sure, we had bad taste, but we were so much more fun back then. We had fun the way, say, the Spanish are notorious for having a good time.
America, try to be more Spanish and get over the gay thing. They are queer and they are here. And if we can’t do that, let’s at least have a full-out push to return to the true good old days where everyone was easy-going because we were polluted in one form or another.
Thinking about this makes me miss the Seventies. We were more like the Spanish back then, a more liberal, open nation. Carter was in office, and yes, the country was in a recession, but both rock and roll and disco were thriving and punk was just emerging on the scenes. People were dancing machines, whether it was the hustle or moshing. Hair was long (on guys), women were talking liberation and equal rights, and everyone was drinking crappy wine with screw tops. Sure, we had bad taste, but we were so much more fun back then. We had fun the way, say, the Spanish are notorious for having a good time.
America, try to be more Spanish and get over the gay thing. They are queer and they are here. And if we can’t do that, let’s at least have a full-out push to return to the true good old days where everyone was easy-going because we were polluted in one form or another.
Frist Needs to Party
Quick, someone give Senator Bill Frist a mojito because this dude needs a cocktail something bad. You know the story: he wants to put some bible-thumping judges on the federal bench. Democrats contend that the judges are extremists whose legal decisions are based more on conservative ideology than legal merits. They’ve made it clear that they will filibuster the nominations. Frist, a typical get-ouf-of-my-sandbox Republican, has said he would respond by moving to change the filibuster rules to the simple majority standard.
What is this kind of attitude gaining him? A good chunk of nada. GOP polling compiled by the Winston Group and presented late last week to Senate staffers showed that 51% of registered voters opposed the idea of changing the rules — compared with 37% who backed it.
Frist. DeLay. W. Cheney. Rummie. What a bad-boy gang of spoiled brats the Republicans have weaved. Thanks, GOP, for making Democrats look good. We need the positive image for a change.
What is this kind of attitude gaining him? A good chunk of nada. GOP polling compiled by the Winston Group and presented late last week to Senate staffers showed that 51% of registered voters opposed the idea of changing the rules — compared with 37% who backed it.
Frist. DeLay. W. Cheney. Rummie. What a bad-boy gang of spoiled brats the Republicans have weaved. Thanks, GOP, for making Democrats look good. We need the positive image for a change.
April 23, 2005
Thinking Like Rove
Finally! The Democrats are starting to think like Karl Rove. There is a God, and, yes Virginia, he is a liberal. The dems are coming out of the closet and declaring that the energy bill the house passed on Thursday will raise gasoline prices and subsidize oil companies, but fail to reduce the country's dependence on foreign oil. If that doesn’t get the red states’ attention, then they really are good for nothing but flying over.
The sounding call came from Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass who said in Dem’s weekly radio address: "We cannot afford to continue to pursue such a failed energy policy. If we fail to reduce our dependence on Opec oil, we remain beholden to events in dangerous, unstable parts of the world. ... If we fail to reduce the cost of energy, businesses will suffer.”
I’m dead serious with what I’m about to say: the tone of his address is classic Rove. Scare the bejeez out of everyone. Paint a picture of a doomed world where Muslims rule us. Thank you, God. Thank you Rep. Markey. Now you dems are starting to get the picture. Win votes by fear. W did and look at how good it worked for him in the last election.
The sounding call came from Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass who said in Dem’s weekly radio address: "We cannot afford to continue to pursue such a failed energy policy. If we fail to reduce our dependence on Opec oil, we remain beholden to events in dangerous, unstable parts of the world. ... If we fail to reduce the cost of energy, businesses will suffer.”
I’m dead serious with what I’m about to say: the tone of his address is classic Rove. Scare the bejeez out of everyone. Paint a picture of a doomed world where Muslims rule us. Thank you, God. Thank you Rep. Markey. Now you dems are starting to get the picture. Win votes by fear. W did and look at how good it worked for him in the last election.
April 21, 2005
Holy Water or Big Water Stain?
I’ve been in LA, living amongst the beautiful people and searching for stars but just finding tourists. When I returned to the real world (if you can call Vegas the real world, which you can’t) I learned that we have a new pope, Bush is trying to give another Jackass a job, and that Mary, as in the Big J’s Mom, is making a special appearance on an underpass in Chicago.
You know, I don’t mean to be skeptical, but if this apparition is the real thing, shouldn’t she have picked a place a little more dignified? Show me a water stain on a wall at the nearest Prada store and I’m a believer. There’s something logical about the God of handbags and the Mother of the God of Mankind appearing in the same venue. Oh there I go again, with the blasphemy. I can’t help it. I lead a small life and I love to make fun of people who get inspired by water stains on an underpass.
I once wrote a short story about a child who was spooked by the wood knots in her grandpa’s walking cane. They looked evil to her. That story got rejected everywhere. What a dumbass I was. I should have changed the story so that the cane held the likeness of Mary, and bam, the AP would have picked me up, fiction or no fiction. It’s all the same these days.
You know, I don’t mean to be skeptical, but if this apparition is the real thing, shouldn’t she have picked a place a little more dignified? Show me a water stain on a wall at the nearest Prada store and I’m a believer. There’s something logical about the God of handbags and the Mother of the God of Mankind appearing in the same venue. Oh there I go again, with the blasphemy. I can’t help it. I lead a small life and I love to make fun of people who get inspired by water stains on an underpass.
I once wrote a short story about a child who was spooked by the wood knots in her grandpa’s walking cane. They looked evil to her. That story got rejected everywhere. What a dumbass I was. I should have changed the story so that the cane held the likeness of Mary, and bam, the AP would have picked me up, fiction or no fiction. It’s all the same these days.
April 10, 2005
Can You Put That Baby Out?
Why can’t we have no-baby sections on planes and in restaurants? They do that for cigarettes and I’d argue that babies are just as annoying (like cigarettes, they smell bad) and they are also bad for your health (people are always getting colds from being around wheezing, sneezing babies).
I have to fly to LA on Tuesday, and because I am opposed to babies in general, I always end up sitting right next to a zoned-out mom and her screaming, squirming, dough-bag of poo. Wow. I sound like a child-hater. I must be a democrat.
I have to fly to LA on Tuesday, and because I am opposed to babies in general, I always end up sitting right next to a zoned-out mom and her screaming, squirming, dough-bag of poo. Wow. I sound like a child-hater. I must be a democrat.
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