Hooah

I'm inordinately tickled that Archer has re-listed me on his blogroll.

It feels kinda like that scene in "Mean Girls" when the mean girls invite Lindsay Lohan's character to eat at their lunch table.

Christmastime is Here

I've gotten the mushy Andrew Gold-y "Thank You for Being a Friend" crap out of the way, now here's what I did last night after talking to the aforementioned concerned friends...

1) Sat down for a long time and did a Smoking Meditation. In the old days, this used to be called "sitting and brooding," but in my new Buddhist aspirational mindset, I've renamed it the Smoking Meditation.

2) Decide to enhance the Smoking Meditation by adding the Polish-Off-That-Half-bottle-of-Aglianico Meditation as well.

3) Decide that since I ended the day feeling bad I should make myself feel worse by calling East Village Guy. Surprisingly, he sounds happy to hear from me. We have a nice chat with plans to get together next week.

4) Decide that it would be a good idea to cheer myself up even further by decorating my house for Christmas. This entails climbing a very tall ladder to pull down boxes of lights and ornaments. Hold on very very tightly while climbing the ladder because I feel a little wobbly in the knees. Remember that all I ate yesterday was cereal for breakfast and a half slice of pizza for lunch. Only dropped the stuffed Rudolph-Hermie-Snowman figures. Nothing breakable is lost, though I do knock a hammer off the top of the refrigerator.

5) Decide that I can't decorate without Christmas music and pull out all my Christmas CD's. Decide putting on festive-yet-sad Christmas music requires opening 2nd bottle of Aglianico and sitting on the floor surrounded by cd's and playing DJ for an hour and singing along with The Carpenters Christmas Portrait at the top of my lungs. "O Holy Night" big favorite.

6) Put on Dad's favorite Perry Como Christmas album and cry sentimentally for a few minutes.

7) Decide now would be a good time to do the Smoke-Half-a-Joint Meditation.

8) Decide to frame bookshelf in Christmas lights. Retrieve ladder and hammer from kitchen floor and reach for box of nails from top of refrigerator. Am able to locate most of them except the ones that rolled under the fridge.

9) Only pound thumb twice hanging lights.

10) Am fearless administering oral antibiotic to Mambo.

11) Decide that 10:30 is a really good time to go to bed. Mambo and Madison agree.

11) Pass out.

Whoever You Are, Thank You

Blogging, it appears, is a very good way for my friends to stay in
touch without actually having to stay in touch. Since it's a place
for me to brain-dump, all too frequently what I post on the fly makes
me seem like a cross between Charlie Brown (depressed), Bill the Cat
(ack!) and an ADHD teenager (ohmigawwd spastic).

But those crisis posts which get thrown up are a virtual Bat Signal.
Commissioner Gordon shines it into the vapor, and like clockwork, my
cell phone starts buzzing, flashing, and vibrating.

The pack starts circle and check in, mostly along the lines of:

"Are you OKAY? What's going ON?"

It makes me bow with gratitude that I have such lovely friends.

Gassho.

Here's What You Learn

That 24 inches of personal space that good Japanese girls maintain?
They exist for a reason.

They exist to keep you out of the arms' reach of people who may be
dangerous to you.

I am a complete and utter fool.

No more right now because I am feeling like a shrivelled little
raisin inside.

I got nothing.

Happy Thanksgiving

Here are a few of the things for which I am grateful:

1) The wonderful family that I have been fortunate to have found in New York City. They are my support, my touchstones and my guiding stars.

2) My three sisters, without whom I don't think

Just So You Don't Think I Exaggerate Its Lameness

The purpose of a company holiday party -- or at least I've always thought -- is to reward your employees for the prior year, to give them a chance to get out of the office and to mingle socially -- in a different setting.

The keywords being: IN A DIFFERENT SETTING.

Apparently that's not the case here at Stalag 40, which (from what I always heard) had great parties in great bars and everyone got crazy and really let down their hair.

Seems that this year the bosses have decided to cheap out. The party is next Saturday night, HERE AT THE OFFICE.

Wait a cotton-fuckall-picking minute.

So basically, we come into the sweatshop for five straight days, then we're expected to -- GET THIS -- come into the office ON A WEEKEND, for a SIXTH STRAIGHT DAY?

Are you fucking kidding me?

I'm Doing It Again

Oh my god.

I am sitting here at my desk and my dad called and I just spontaneously started crying.

this place is killing me.

Ironic

I'm signed up to receive a "Daily Peace Quote" from Living Compassion.

Today's quote is:

The greatest tragedy in life is not death; the greatest tragedy
takes place when our talents and capabilities are underutilized and
allowed
to rust while we are still living.
- Amma

Petty Bitch

I'm talking about myself.

Here's the story:

I have great, great, great music. I love old 60's and 70's music so much, and have about a thousand cd's at home. And over the course of the last six months, I have lovingly carried cd's into the office and loaded them onto my iTunes here at work.

My playlist has brought a lot of joy to many, many people here. Or so I have been told.

But you know what I realized?

I was musically slutty.

You know how you try to look at other people's playlists and get a sense of who they might be? ("Oh my GOD, he has Kenny Loggins on his playlist?" Okay, so my hardon for the hot retoucher wilted a little bit when I saw that one. Of course, his hotness prevailed over Kenny Loggins and I had to admit to myself that - ahem - I love Kenny Loggins.)

Well, I realized today that I had loaded close to fifteen hundred of my own songs onto my iTunes, which any one of these chuckleheads could listen to on the network. And I further realized: crap, sharing my playlist with THESE people -- that's like group sex with a bunch of folks I don't even like.

So in a quiet fifteen minutes or so, I very deliberately did two things: I dumped over a thousand songs from my playlist AND made my sharing password required.

So yes, I am a petty bitch. I took my toys and left the playground, so to speak.

Dear Hot Retoucher, it's not you, it's me.

Dear fellow sweatshop employees, it's not me, it's you.

Happy Trailllllllls

Before I sign out for the evening, I do need to reassure y'all that I'm not just sitting around kvetching about the awfulness of this place, I am actually doing something. I'm in touch with a client who needs a new PM, I'm in touch with a headhunter or two...

My resume has been updated and is ready to fly in a heartbeat.

I'm not really one to stand around when things get this bad.

Do you know what I realized today? I have been working here for six months and I don't have a single friend here. Not one. And I know that stuff isn't supposed to matter, but sorry, to me, it does. I'm supposed to be a grown up and all mature and stuff, but unless you've been the fat, homely, unpopular kid who got her own personal tormentor in the 8th Grade, then you just keep quiet.

I've never worked in such a place before. I mean, I have a trail of friends from past jobs that stretches back nearly two decades. It can't be me. I'm not THAT unlikeable. Annoying as hell sometimes, a real pain in the ass occasionally, but I didn't think unlikeable would figure into it.

I told my sister what happened and she started to cry for me. I'm tearing up right now because it brings back all those hurt feelings again, so I'm going to stop here. I guess I'm not done crying about it.

Look.

Here's Janey: If you have deliberately hurt my feelings and made me cry, I will be afraid of you from then on. If you have stood by and watched someone hurt me, I will never trust you again. In all cases, you have lost me. Forever.

Friday Night Follies

Now, being a girl who was feeling really, really bad about herself on Friday afternoon, I made a little phone call to EmKay. It was a "come over later and bring wine" booty call, which I made balls to the wall from here at the prairie dog farm.

Sometimes you need a little attention from a man to make yourself feel better.

I know it's kind of cheap, sort of like eating a Big Mac when what you really want is a fat fillet from Luger's, but I needed some comfort lovin' the way other people need comfort food.

He wasn't going to be able to come over until after he closed the bar, which meant I was letting him into my building at 4:30 in the morning.

Now, the good thing about EmKay is that given our years and years of history, I didn't feel particularly compelled to have to primp and pretty myself up for him. It would have been a nice thing to do, but I didn't. He's lucky I took a shower before he came over.

So anyway, he comes over and we drink wine, smoke a little, laugh, listen to music, drink some rum, smoke a little more, listen to some more music.

For a few minutes we went into the bedroom and then didn't even take our clothes off. Somehow, sleeping with him just didn't feel like the right thing to do.

But it was surely so comforting to be with him, just laughing and talking and laughing some more.

He did try to do all the gettalittlecloser moves, but I just wasn't feeling it.

"What do you think?" He asked me. "Has it just been too long?"

"I honestly don't know," I replied. "I am just loving what we are doing, right here, right now, so, so much."

Isn't that weird? I, Janey Horntoad, didn't want to have sex with a man WHOM I ADORE WITH EVERY CELL OF MY BEING AND WHO ADORES ME RIGHT BACK.

You know when you just have that soul-deep love for someone that will never go away? There's no nostalgia or hopefulness that you will recapture the fire or passion of what you once had, but a recognition that what you have now is a whole lot of the same thing without all of the attachment and jealousy and drama.

It was stupendously awesome.

We just look at each other and we really, really see each other -- we know the good, the bad and the gargoyle-esque about each other. And we just...love each other in a way that seems to me to be so goodhearted and friendly and well, simple. Each of us merely wants the other to be happy, and we are each other's biggest cheerleader.

And my god, that man can make me laugh like no one else.

One of my meditation teachers told a story that went something like this:

She had a dream that she was teaching, and someone approached her and asked, "Why do people love us?"

And she responded, simply, "Because we see them."

And that, my friends, is what EmKay and I have, in a nutshell. I cherish that so much.

I'm a Swinger

And by that I mean I am covering the swing shift this week, 12 to 9, for the night production guy who has taken his daughter to Hell -- er, I mean, Disneyworld.

Since it's a holiday week, I expect it will be fairly slow and quiet, so brace yourselves for a flurry of posting.

Not That I'm Fickle or Anything

But yes, I changed my blogskin again. I just hated that nasty orange thing. This seemed relatively inoffensive.

I wish I had a cool anime character like Dawn

Because I'm the World's Biggest Pain in the Ass

So I got one of those annoying chain emails from one of my housewife breeder friends. This one was a recipe chain letter. You know, send a recipe to the top person on the list and send the letter on to 10 friends.

Here is the recipe that I sent to some stranger:

My Favorite Recipe, by Jane Doe:

Grey Goose Dirty Martini

Ingredients:

1 1/2 oz Grey Goose Vodka
3/4 oz Dry Vermouth
Splash of Olive Juice
3 Olives

Mixing instructions:

Chill martini glass well by filling it with ice and water. Discard the ice and water.

Pour the vermouth into the chilled glass and swirl to coat the inside of the glass. Discard the excess.

Put the vodka and olive juice into a cocktail shaker with lots of ice. Shake very well and strain into the martini glass.

Add olives.

Imbibe.

Enjoy.

One More Thing

Oh, yeah, that thing with the Hot Retoucher?

Ain't happening. A non-starter. Stumbled out of the gate. Any other cliches y'all want to throw in here? The mad, mad makeout session, followed by HR's email to me that he wanted to come into the city and hang out with me some Saturday night, followed by, well, nothing, just leads me to feel like I been playyyyyed.

Like I was some sort of pre-divorce ego stroke or something. Which really just sucks, and yes, it has been definitively proven that I am a moron who does not learn. People say nice things to me and I believe them.

But, if there's one thing Janey knows, it's when to cut her losses. She may not have Fuck You Money to walk out on her job, but she has enough Backdafuckup Spirit to not let one more person mess with her head and heart. I'm so tired of walking around holding my entrails in like someone out of Saving Private Ryan.

HR said this: He isn't ready.

Janey's response: Well, I am.

Thanks for playing.

Peace ------ out.

The Soul-Destroying Job, Part 936

Is this really only the 2nd or 3rd post about the Soul-Destroying Job? It's just that it feels like I've bitched about it for 936 straight days. And I feel like I have been there for 936 years.

I made the decision on Friday that you can't fight City Hall, and so I need to get the fuck out of this toxic, toxic waste dump of a company. Since the powers-that-be at this particular City Hall don't seem particularly inclined to do anything to change or improve the culture of "If You Don't Pee Standing Up, You Have No Value Here" Janey needs to stop attempting to grow a penis and move on to a place that has a more, um, how do you say, current attitude toward women.

I hate this place, so, so much. I have never, ever in my life been so unhappy at a job as this.

I just need to do a brain dump here, a list of a few recent transgressions:

My boss, one of those "I really need to feel like one of the guys and I will abdicate any managerial responsibilities in order to do that" types, allowed the farewell lunch of a departing co-worker in my department to be scheduled at a strip club. If that isn't retarded enough, they neglected to invite me along. So, not only have they chosen an inappropriate venue for said "farewell party," they also really, really hurt my feelings by excluding me.

He once called me "a good worker." I beg your fucking pardon? A GOOD WORKER? I am a BRILLIANT production manager, not some scarf-folder at Old Navy or a factory worker screwing in the same bolt all day long at General Motors.

At the same time, someone must have once given him a gift subscription to some middle-management newsletter, which he diligently reads while sitting on the can, so he can absorb and throw words and phrases like "teamwork" and "innovation" into his conversations at the office while diligently fostering a divide-and-conquer, mediocrity is king, all-fear-all-the-time mentality.

There's this one guy at the company, a real Staten Island guido type, with that dry-look Frankie Valli hairdo and chest-out machismo. Trust me, I've seen the calluses on his knuckles from where they drag on the ground. Because of this one person, FOUR, I repeat, FOUR female production managers before me have left the company. Now, I know this because my manager himself told me this. Strangely enough, all of this troglodyte's accounts have been assigned to little old Janey. The company managed to hire someone to replace the aforementioned departing co-worker (thereby proving my belief that you CAN convince people that you regularly walk into doors or fall down stairs because most people just aren't paying that much attention). I made a (what seemed to me) reasonable request that Johnny Baggadonuts' accounts be assigned to the new, MALE production manager. One would think El Jefe would make this connection:

1) Johnny Baggadonuts has been directly responsible for FOUR women leaving the company.
2) Currently Johnny Baggadonuts' accounts are assigned to Jane, who has complained vigorously and multiple times about the same gender-based issues that the other women had.
3) I have hired a new MALE production person.
4) I can save myself from having to find ANOTHER production person by transferring Johnny's accounts to the MALE production person.

Instead, the stupid motherfucker sticks me with the Troglodyte's accounts. While out the other side of his mouth, he is mouthing platitudes like "I have a daughter, and as a woman and a minority, I wouldn't want her to have to encounter attitudes like this."

Ladies and gentlemen, I have had it.

Janey is soooooo GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONE.

Psychiatric Counseling Sought

I received an email from a friend this morning, with the following
subject line:

"Mastectomy Bill in Congress"

And here is where my twisted mind went without so much as a hiccup:

"Chemotherapy Joe visits Senate"

It's Not Me, It's You

I can't for the life of me remember where I got this, so I can't
attribute to anyone. But I laughed again when I saw this:

The Classic Breakup Excuses and Their Translations:

1. It's not you

Translation: It is you, it is 100% you.

2. I like you as a friend.

Translation: You are ugly.

3. I don't think of you that way.

Translation: You are very ugly.

4. I'm just not looking for a relationship.

Translation: I am looking for a relationship, but not with you.

5. I don't want to ruin our friendship.

Translation: I would rather slit my wrists than go to bed with you.

6. I need space/I need to sort myself out.

Translation: I don't love you any more, and come to think of it I
probably never did.

Wolf Cookies for Breakfast, Snake Heads for Lunch

I've been feeling wretchedly misanthropic for the last couple of days and I think I need to crawl under the porch for awhile.

The things that I usually tolerate with a grin and a giggle and bounce are now the things that bug the shit out of me/enrage me/make me want to cry.

I hate everyone right now and myself most of all.

There's no music in my soul. Believe me, I've been listening. It ain't there. Not even that single cello playing plainsong to
accompany my blue mood. Just dead air. I couldn't even get my guitar tuned last night. Gave up after a half hour of trying. Who knows, maybe it was in tune, and I wonder if I HEAR things differently when I feel this glum. As if what I hear is merely a
reflection of my mood. Everything was jangly and tuneless.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. I am crabby beyond belief. YOU go several nights running with your sleep interrupted by a drug-
addled crackhead welfare-sucking asshole and see what YOUR temperament looks like.

Then, a woman I work with looked at my new haircut (which I love, thank you Roni, for keeping me stylish and current) and pronounced it (AND I quote), "ummmm...interesting." I beg your pardon? That sounds to me like women-who-hate-other-women-bitch-speak for "ugly." You know, if you're going to be insulting, be ballsy. Do it right out where everyone can see it, put it in my face, don't give me this passive-aggressive bullshit. And frankly, if we're going to sling style insults, this one might just want to step off. I mean, I can take insults about my appearance from someone who's dead-on fashionable or
stylish, but from a caftan-wearing blob with no style to speak of, dyed orange hair and goat hairs on her chinny-chin-chin? Fuck you. Hurt my feelings, will you? Hmph.

I just needed to unload that.

Now I'm going under the porch for a few days.

Side Comments That Have Nothing to do with Politics

In the meantime, today I am feeling...

1) Exhausted
-- because Nancy the crackhead neighbor was at it again last night. The yelling, the screaming, the slamming of the doors. When I first moved in, my lefty-liberal heart bled a little -- I thought to myself, "Maybe she yells because she doesn't feel like she has a voice." (Mimes finger down the throat). Now the bleeding heart has scabbed over and I think, "Maybe she yells because SHE'S A CRACKHEAD ASSHOLE." Now I look at her two year old with a jaundiced eye and think, "Future felon."

2) Cranky
-- because I'm exhausted. If I lose one more hour of sleep because of this waste of humanity, there will be a murder. "Hello, Archer? I'm at Rikers. I killed a crackhead and I'm not sorry."

3) Horny
-- because, well, because I'm always horny. Frisky. Bushy-tailed. It must be because I never got married. Do they make you hand in your libido when you sign the marriage license? Because, frankly, I work with a bunch of men who are always complaining about how their wives won't put out. It's one of the questions I've always wanted to ask. That and the blow-job question. "Excuse me, ma'am? Were those blow-jobs merely installment payments on the engagement ring?" I've asked my married friends that questions and haven't gotten a satisfactory answer yet -- why do the blow-jobs stop as soon as "I do" is uttered? (I was reminded of this by a recent post of Archer's).

4) Chagrined and embarrassed.
-- because I am starting to think that taking the HR home two months ago was a big, big, big mistake. Because now there is someone at work who KNOWS WHAT I LOOK LIKE NAKED.

It would be one thing if the seeing each other naked had continued past that one night. This -- well, I'm not sure what this was. I haven't had a one-night stand in YEARS. I know, I know. You'll fuck another woman's husband but you won't have a one-night stand? Call me nutty. Then I go and have a one-night stand with someone I have to freakin' see every single day. See, I can't even do that right!

And it's not like I can sit him down and say, "You know, HR, I have to confess to being embarrassingly drunk that night, and parts of the night keep coming back to me in flashes that make my entire body flush with (humiliation? erotic memories? who knows?). But I do remember really, really, really having a good time, not to mention whispering an awful lot of filth in your willing little ear. But, honestly, HR, there are a few, teensy, weensy vodka-soaked holes in the evening, and maybe I don't remember all of the things you said to me, but I do think I remember you asking if I would wait three months, and now, two months after the fact, I don't know what that means or even if it means anything anymore. I mean, you've got a whole shitload of crap to go through with this divorce and everything, and here I find myself - AGAIN - waiting like a good pet. Sort of. And, well, I wouldn't mind that so much if I could only REMEMBER what it is I'm waiting for, or if I'm meant to even still be waiting, so could you please just let me know? Either way, I'm okay with what you tell me."

Unless, HR, you tell me that you are getting back together with your wife, then I'll have to quit my job because surely at some company event down the road I would meet her, and every time I saw her I would be thinking, "I had your husband's penis in my mouth."

Dancing on the Republicans' Graves

SCHADENFREUDE

SCHADENFREUDE

SCHADENFREUDE

MAN, I love that word.

Yesterday we partook in a referendum on stupidity.

Like so many of my friends, I'm doing a rude, skirt-flipping cancan at the side of the graves of the Republicans. Tossing in the occasional moon to add further insult.

Macacawitz of Virginia is now the last domino that needs to fall, then I'll turn it into a pole dance.

Mr. Bush, can you hear us now?

For One Brief Shining Moment it Was Camelot

But leave it to one weirdo to ruin it for everyone.

Yes, folks, the comments moderation has been turned on again.

I TOLD you I'm a psycho pest strip.

The Gene Pool Out of Which Janey Crawled

These are my parents.

This photo was taken on an August day in 1947, when Dad was 19 and Mummy, 18.

He was part of the American Army of Occupation in Okinawa, Japan. He grew up solidly blue-collar in Carnegie, PA (where we pronounce it, correctly, "Car-NAY-gie." Trust me. You can call the Carnegie Foundation in New York and they will confirm that down there in da 'burgh, we got it right. Take that, you New York snobs.) His father was a coal miner.

My mother was born and raised on a tiny speck of an island in the Ryukyus called Miyako. Her parents married, had a son, divorced, then remarried and set about having four more children. My grandfather was at one time moved by the government to Japan, where his name was changed to S****mura (more Japanese, less Okinawan) and he was a palace guard for a time for Emperor Hirohito. My mother was famous not only for her beauty, but her intelligence.

What is invisible in this photo of that gentle-seeming girl is her fire. My mother is possessed of something that she passed down to all of us, what we call The S****mura Temper. When we are angry, we get "small mouth" and a stubborn jut to our chins. Sometimes we wave our arms and yell. Unlike my mother, I am incapable of sustaining fury -- it blows in and blows out with the ferocity of a July thunderstorm in the mountains. Even now, on days when her mind is fully engaged, my mother will still give me that look -- a mix of condescension and ire that tells me that I'd better watch my p's and q's.

Every time I look at this photo, I feel like Princess Leigh-Cheri inspecting her pack of Camel cigarettes in her attic. (Go read your Tom Robbins. Uh-oh, spagetti-oh.) Something is revealed to me every single time I look at it.

First and foremost, look at these two people and you will never, ever, EVER again question any one of my issues and insecurities about how I look. Looking at these incandescent teenagers, I imagine I can understand how, say, the children of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie will someday feel. Looking at them, I know how Alexa Ray Joel feels.

Look at them! They look like movie stars. I call this photograph, "The Movie Still," because it is so perfectly posed and evocative of that specific time, that specific place, that it almost doesn't seem real.

He is tall and handsome, sandy-haired and square-chinned and what you don't see are his bright blue laughing eyes. From his brushy crew cut to the bottom of the photo, everything about him says "GI Joe." The Army tans, the web belt, even the deck of smokes in his front pocket.

And my mother, well, she's in her wedding finery and doesn't look so much like a Japanese doll as a dewy flower. She is so young she still has baby fat on her face. As the years passed, this would melt away and reveal elegant planes and angles in her features. She is nestled into the crook of his arm, trusting that he will take care of her and save her from becoming the thing she dreaded most -- an Okinawa housewife.

She has no idea of what lies ahead for her, or perhaps she would change her mind and decide to stay in Okinawa. All she knows is that this boy walked into his barracks, saw her ironing shirts, and fell in love. He pursued her. He chased her with the single-minded devotion of a hound. He drove an Army truck up and down her street to try to catch glimpses of her. He went to her father and asked for her hand in marriage, probably in his best broken Japanese. And after her father told him "no" the boy went off to the hills with a bottle and a gun and his despair. Soldiers had to bring him to his senses.

Now will you let me marry her? I've shown how I love her.

No, you've shown that you're crazy. There's no way I'd let you marry her now.

And my mother sat with her father and told him what she wanted. She was headstrong and in love. Finally, my grandfather relented.

You must, he told her, do what you feel is the right thing for you.

So she married him.

My father, he knew the Army was going to send him home. In his youth and passion and his belief that love can conquer every obstacle, he had written an impassioned letter to the Inspector General pleading his case. Pleading his love for this tiny island girl.

So, a few days after this photo was taken, after they had been married by an Army chaplain, the Army put my father on a plane to return to the United States.

Without her.

In the meantime, the Inspector General received his letter. Like his daughter Janey would one day, my father had a gift for blarney and a way with words.

When my father's troop transport landed in Manila for refueling, there was a message from the Inspector General.

Find this soldier, he told his underlings, and put him on the next transport back to Okinawa so he can get his wife and bring her home.

Next August, they will celebrate their 60th anniversary.

Mimi LeDuck

Last Tuesday I went to see a preview of Annie Golden's new musical, Mimi LeDuck. Okay, it's off-broadway, but it's still Annie Golden, and she's always worth seeing no matter what she's doing.

And I'm not just saying that because Annie herself gave me the free ticket. (One of those friend of a friend deals.)

Go and hear her sing. Her voice is some sort of miracle, you know? Unfortunately, the material does not live up to her voice. She really needs a musical written just for her. Somewhere along the way, she seems to have fallen in between the cracks -- the wrong look, the wrong age, the wrong time. With her voice, comic timing and stage presence, she should have been a big star. A big, big star.

So back to the show.

The producers exhumed Eartha Kitt to play the landlady of the boarding house. I have to admit being a little worried that CatWoman was going to use up her last life and drop dead onstage, but that worry was only surpassed by my concern that Tom Aldredge (aka Hugh DeAngelis, Carmela Soprano's father) would expire before he could catch her, and there would be a heap of elderly mouldering flesh onstage and the 2nd half of the story would be ruined.

(Well, maybe that would ruin it for some people. Probably not for me. Me, I loved the suspense of watching Eartha wobble a couple of times on her high red heels, wondering if the cast could improv a broken hip into the plot.)

The high point of the night, besides the Eartha cliffhanger, was meeting an actor from my very favorite musical of all time, 1776. William Duell played McNair, the Congressional custodian. Out of nostalgia, I went home and watched the DVD again. Verrrry interesting, if you watch in the context of our current administration.

So, anyway. I did love the theme of Mimi LeDuck -- casting off your humdrum life to follow your heart and your dreams. It was very, very relevant to me and where I am in my life. But, alas, the songs just didn't live up to it. There wasn't that one song that sticks with you.

I'm the biggest, most sentimental sap on the planet (besides my dad), so if a musical doesn't jerk my tears at least once, then it's just not working.

Final Analysis: For die-hard Annie Golden fans only. Book & music need work.

And then they crawled right back up into his belly

Fucking John Kerry.

So the guy makes a ham-fisted joke.

First of all, a New England patrician making a joke is ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS a mistake. WASPS and folks of their ilk should never, ever try to be funny. Because, as everyone knows, they are genetically incapable of it. They lack wit, and their timing always sucks.

And of course, he bumbles and fumbles and blunders and blows the joke, leaving it open, of course, for the Republican Manufactured Outrage Machine to latch onto it as a slur against the troops.

So now the portion of the American public, the ones who don't actually think, but who need to have their thoughts handed to them, who buy into all the shit that Karl Rove and Ken Mehlman and their minions pump into the media, and which the media sheep have dutifully reported, buy into this bit of hogwash: John Kerry insulted the troops!

Then, to add insult to injury, Senator Wishy-Washy backs the fuck down? Jesus Fucking Christ in a sidecar, the least he could do is step forward and say, "Yeah, I said it. So What?" Then he should blast the Media Pansies who fed into the right wing Manufactured Outrage Machine instead of saying, yo, Numbnuts, this is actually what I was saying and if you actually paid attention and reported it in context, you would have gotten it.

But, nooooooo, now Kerry's out there mewling and apologizing and begging forgiveness like a candy-ass.

I hate candy-asses.

Almost as much as I hate WASPS.

My apologies to any real numbnuts, pansies, or candy-asses who may have been offended by this.

I don't care what anyone else says

I saw John Kerry on George Stephanopolous last week and is he pissed.

I wanted to ask, "Hello? Have we met? You resemble a guy who ran for
president a few years back but that guy was a much bigger pussy."

Holy War Bride, Batman!

Thank god for the occasional compassionate commander

If Dad hadn't had one in 1947, your Janey wouldn't exist today!

Congratulations, Senator Kerry

Nice to see you've grown a set since 2004.

Archer, I'm Asking you In Public

Please marry me.

Any man who can make me blow coffee out of my nose and cackle like Margaret Hamilton the day after Halloween is worth doing the dirty deed for.