If, like me, you kind of had the sense that John McCain's heart really wasn't in the nasty campaigning, and that he is really, deep down inside, an honorable guy, you should read this article from Rolling Stone.
It's very, very illuminating and paints a really unflattering portrait of a guy whose motto shouldn't be "Country First," but instead, "McCain First."
I guess Cracker (aka "Real") America thinks it's okay for a guy to call his wife a c**t in front of three reporters.
My favorites zen teacher says it this way: How you do anything is how you do everything.
Monday, October 27, 2008
Some Belated RIP's
Lefty Rosenthal Without Lefty, Scorsese wouldn't have one of his masterpieces, Sharon Stone wouldn't have an Oscar nomination, and one of my old pals wouldn't have his anonymous blog ID for commenting on my posts.
Levi Stubbs No singer yearned quite like Levi. Go back and listen to "Bernadette" if you don't believe me. See, he's a guy who has Bernadette, but living in terror that he won't be able to keep her, that other men will steal her away. In the first part of the song, before the break, Levi doesn't even sing the melody -- he's just guttin' it out in one despairing shout. You have to love that.
Plus, who else could have played the Mean Green Mother from Outer Space?
Paul Newman Sigh. There's just nothing else to say.
Levi Stubbs No singer yearned quite like Levi. Go back and listen to "Bernadette" if you don't believe me. See, he's a guy who has Bernadette, but living in terror that he won't be able to keep her, that other men will steal her away. In the first part of the song, before the break, Levi doesn't even sing the melody -- he's just guttin' it out in one despairing shout. You have to love that.
Plus, who else could have played the Mean Green Mother from Outer Space?
Paul Newman Sigh. There's just nothing else to say.
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Oldie but goodie - a big laugh
I'm fully aware that lately I am angry and more than a little shrill. I wake up with my jaw clenched and my shoulders hunched forward as if curled to protect my soft nougaty insides. I am drive-by eating and not exercising or sleeping enough. I'm certainly not getting laid enough.
From the important -- a failing economy (along with my own bank auguring in), the scary specter of Dubya in a skirt being one malignant melanoma away from the presidency, my dear old pet coming back from the brink of death, the upcoming first anniversary of my father's death, learning that an eternally young at heart old New York friend passed away tragically in Malibu in August -- to the relatively mundane -- a project going south in a spectacular crash and burn way -- these things have all mixed together to make me anxious and fearful for the past several weeks.
I believe this is a tad bit evident in some of the posts that I have written.
This week I'm in California again on business, and maybe it's the distance from my everyday life, or maybe it's the mood-enhancing, Vitamin D-laden southern California sunshine, but today I feel like a little air has gotten in.
I realized that in the last month I haven't had any really big laughs in a while; recognizing that laughter will oxygenate things even more, I went looking for videos that delight and amuse me, that quite simply, crack me up.
So I Googled something guaranteed to delight me:
Models Falling Down.
Now, the video itself is hilarious. Not only does the model fall TWICE, but when she goes down for the second time, her ankles do this crazy wobble as if suddenly they are cooked spaghetti. And pay attention! Both times, she never lets go of the watering can! But the best part of the video is the news anchor wraparound. After the video finishes, they cut back to the studio, where the anchor is laughing so hard he is unable to speak.
I swear, this made me laugh as hard as the clip of Frasier Crane singing "Buttons and Bows."
And I can breathe again.
And totally unrelated to anything else in this post, how frickin' adorable is Rachel Maddow?
From the important -- a failing economy (along with my own bank auguring in), the scary specter of Dubya in a skirt being one malignant melanoma away from the presidency, my dear old pet coming back from the brink of death, the upcoming first anniversary of my father's death, learning that an eternally young at heart old New York friend passed away tragically in Malibu in August -- to the relatively mundane -- a project going south in a spectacular crash and burn way -- these things have all mixed together to make me anxious and fearful for the past several weeks.
I believe this is a tad bit evident in some of the posts that I have written.
This week I'm in California again on business, and maybe it's the distance from my everyday life, or maybe it's the mood-enhancing, Vitamin D-laden southern California sunshine, but today I feel like a little air has gotten in.
I realized that in the last month I haven't had any really big laughs in a while; recognizing that laughter will oxygenate things even more, I went looking for videos that delight and amuse me, that quite simply, crack me up.
So I Googled something guaranteed to delight me:
Models Falling Down.
Now, the video itself is hilarious. Not only does the model fall TWICE, but when she goes down for the second time, her ankles do this crazy wobble as if suddenly they are cooked spaghetti. And pay attention! Both times, she never lets go of the watering can! But the best part of the video is the news anchor wraparound. After the video finishes, they cut back to the studio, where the anchor is laughing so hard he is unable to speak.
I swear, this made me laugh as hard as the clip of Frasier Crane singing "Buttons and Bows."
And I can breathe again.
And totally unrelated to anything else in this post, how frickin' adorable is Rachel Maddow?
Petulant Old Man Gets Testy With Des Moines Register
Unwittingly hilarious.
"I'm not an astronaut but I understand the challenges of space."
You know, come to think of it, I work on the Upper East Side, and Mike Bloomberg LIVES on the UES, so I must be qualified to be mayor of New York. I ride the subways, so I'm fully qualified to be the head of the MTA.
And I can see Russia from my house.
Do you think if the Smothers Brothers still had a variety show, they'd write a song with the chorus "And I can see Russia from my house."?
And yes, the Smothers Brothers reference outs me as old.
"I'm not an astronaut but I understand the challenges of space."
You know, come to think of it, I work on the Upper East Side, and Mike Bloomberg LIVES on the UES, so I must be qualified to be mayor of New York. I ride the subways, so I'm fully qualified to be the head of the MTA.
And I can see Russia from my house.
Do you think if the Smothers Brothers still had a variety show, they'd write a song with the chorus "And I can see Russia from my house."?
And yes, the Smothers Brothers reference outs me as old.
Everywhere Like Such As
Obfuscate
Function: verb
Etymology: Late Latin obfuscatus, past participle of obfuscare, from Latin ob- in the way + fuscus dark brown — more at ob-, dusk
Date: 1577
transitive verb
1 a: darken b: to make obscure
2: confuse
intransitive verb
: to be evasive, unclear, or confusing
Personally I like the translations from the Latin, "Dark Brown, In the Way." Fits perfectly in the palinabulary, which as we've seen from her interviews, amounts to a strategy of "keep throwing shit to eat up the time allotted."
In other words, everywhere like such as.
Seriously, how is it that "everywhere like such as" didn't become a cultural buzz phrase the way "Don't tase me, bro!" did?
Function: verb
Etymology: Late Latin obfuscatus, past participle of obfuscare, from Latin ob- in the way + fuscus dark brown — more at ob-, dusk
Date: 1577
transitive verb
1 a: darken b: to make obscure
2: confuse
intransitive verb
: to be evasive, unclear, or confusing
Personally I like the translations from the Latin, "Dark Brown, In the Way." Fits perfectly in the palinabulary, which as we've seen from her interviews, amounts to a strategy of "keep throwing shit to eat up the time allotted."
In other words, everywhere like such as.
Seriously, how is it that "everywhere like such as" didn't become a cultural buzz phrase the way "Don't tase me, bro!" did?