They Don't Call it the High Country for Nothing

When I lived in Breckenridge, the diviest dive bar in town was a ramshackle, crooked old barn (it was, literally, an old barn, and it was, literally crooked. If you stood across the street and face it, the entire building had a noticeable list.) called Seamus O'Toole's. It was dark, it smelled bad, the regulars had about seven teeth between them, and it was one of two bars in town where you could go in during ski season and not have to be polite to tourists.

The downside of living in a town whose economic engine is powered by tourism is that you have to interact with tourists. At least in a ski town you only have to do it for four or five months of the year.

Thus, Seamus's.

On Friday nights during happy hour, the bar would be crowded with locals pounding Coors Lights (to drink aything else was heresy), until about 7:30. Around that time, a guy on a giant Harley would roar up to the bar, stroll in, look around, and stroll back out. Ever so slowly, the regulars and locals would follow him out the door, like an ebb tide, until you noticed that the bar was practically empty.

That guy, come "up the hill" on his hog, was of course their dealer. Duh. It took me a few visits to realize.this.

Now I read this -- that poky (in the off season), pop 3000 Breckenridge might legalize pot!

Think of the boom this would bring to their economy. It could be locally grown (though I don't know if marijuana will grow at 9500 feet), packaged, and taxed. Breckenridge would become a little American Amsterdam.

When I was there Breck had the biggest halfpipe in the world; legalizing pot would make it even more of a snowboarders' mecca. Not to mention a year-round destination or relocation spot for people who need medical marijuana to treat their "anxiety" yet who don't want to live in the Land of Douchebaggery (aka LA).

I may need to move back, even though sadly, Seamus's was sold in 2002 to some local community theater group.

Humming John Denver now...

Look at This

The creationist wackadoos who go to that museum that has the dinosaurs with saddles can flap their gums all they want, but if this photo isn't evidence that we are far closer to apes than something divine, I don't know what is.




To read the story of this amazing photo, go here.

And if it doesn't bring tears to your eyes, you are one stone-cold son of a bitch.

You Tell Me Which is More Terrifying

I'm feeling a little better today. Sometimes all you need is a good cry to clean out the plumbing. I don't, however, recommend reading about Baxter the dog if you're feeling the least bit emotionally fragile. Don't Google! I swear, don't do it!

Have you ever played "Which Would You Rather?" If you ever spent any time in a dorm room at college drinking beer out of a beer ball and smoking weed from a Coke-can bong, you probably have. It's one of those stupid stoner games in which you ask someone to choose between two distasteful yet unrelated things. "Which would you rather? Be trapped alone on a desert island forever? Or have two-inch legs?"

Today's "WWYR?" comes to us courtesy of Delta airlines.

Which would you rather? Book a flight on which the two pilots either get distracted or fall asleep and somehow manage to "wander" 150 miles off course, losing radio contact with ATC for nearly an HOUR AND A HALF, causing them to call the pilots of other planes to ask them to try and raise them on the radio, and finally leading the FAA to consider scrambling fighter jets to intercept, or...

Would you rather book a flight from Brazil to Atlanta on which a member of the flight crew becomes ill, and in the resulting cockpit cleanup the rest of the crew misses the runway altogether and lands the plane ON A TAXIWAY?

Both true stories. Read about them both here.

There are so many levels of scary here I don't know where to start. Didn't the flight attendants on the wandering plane wonder what was going on? What about the passengers? Why did it take the FAA so long to even think about srambling jets for a plane that had gone silent for 78 minutes? Does anyone in that agency remember what happened eight years ago when they were caught flatfooted when a bunch of planes went missing? And what about the people on the flight from Brazil? What did they think when an incapacitated navigator or first officer was brought into the main cabin? Did the guys in the Hartsfield tower totally shit themselves as they watched that 757 land in the wrong place, then immediately become believers because there were no other planes on that taxiway?

Note to self: don't fly Delta. Clearly their financial problems are causing some serious trickle-down shit.

Weltschmertz

Isn't it a great word? I'm not sure why I like it so much. Maybe because it so perfectly captures a state of mind in a way that no pedestrian English word can. The German language does have a couple of good words after all (one of my other no-equal-in-English favorites is "schadenfreude").

World sadness.

Perfect for me right now. Maybe it's all this economic uncertainty, or residual jetlag and exhaustion from a nine-day business trip. Maybe it's that I just can't believe that it's been two years since Dad died and I still sometimes feel so terribly sad. Maybe it's because I'm waiting and watching for my old cat to curl up one day and just let go at last (I can't even think about having to make the last ride to Dr. Felton with the Sherpa bag without crying. Poor old man. I can tell myself he's had a good life -- no, he's had a GREAT life -- but that doesn't stop me from being sad when I watch his bony blind self bumping along the furniture to get to the food bowl. What will be worse -- having him go to sleep one day and let go, or having to appoint myself the Mambo Death Panel and put him to sleep? Put ME to sleep, please.)

This will pass, it always does, but for now I think I just need to go through it to come out the other side. I was thinking today -- what must life be like for people who feel like this all the time?

One more thing about the word: I also really, really like it because it's the only word I've ever seen with six consonants in a row.

Oh, no they dih-int!

Really, South Carolina Republicans? Did you really go there?

Next up, John Boehner compliments that boy in the White House for being articulate and clean.

Oh, wait, Biden already did that.

Sen. Sessions (R-AL) Says it's Not the Government's Place to Decide Who the Government Does Business With

Doesn't reading that headline make you feel like the top of your head might explode?

Oh, and he and 30 other senators also condone gang-rape by government contractors.

Here are the other 29:

Alexander (R-TN)
Barrasso (R-WY)
Bond (R-MO)
Brownback (R-KS)
Bunning (R-KY)
Burr (R-NC)
Chambliss (R-GA)
Coburn (R-OK)
Cochran (R-MS)
Corker (R-TN)
Cornyn (R-TX)
Crapo (R-ID)
DeMint (R-SC)
Ensign (R-NV)
Enzi (R-WY)
Graham (R-SC)
Gregg (R-NH)
Inhofe (R-OK)
Isakson (R-GA)
Johanns (R-NE)
Kyl (R-AZ)
McCain (R-AZ)
McConnell (R-KY)
Risch (R-ID)
Roberts (R-KS)
Sessions (R-AL)
Shelby (R-AL)
Thune (R-SD)
Vitter (R-LA)
Wicker (R-MS)

Once Again...

Your Janey is hipper than the New York Times. Not that that's saying much.

I've had Jen linked for a year or so, if I'm not mistaken.

The Greatest Painting Ever

This is even better than those Thomas Kinkade paintings you see on QVC. (No double-wide would be complete without one.)

Have fun scrolling around on the painting and reading what painter has written about each character. Note that he apparently has nothing to say about "Handicapped Child." I'm not sure what that means. Does he mean that handicapped children have no value to our nation and should be aborted? And the "College Student" is holding what the painter calls "the most important book written." He is of course referring to "The Five Thousand Year Leap," which if you've been paying attention, is also Glenn Beck's favorite book.

Thanks, Wonkette, for the quarter hour of laughs!

I Am Not Making This Up

Hey, Dave Barry flies American! I know this because I was behind him in the security line. Yes, I saw Dave Barry with his shoes off. I am not making this up.

Yessiree Bob, I am racking up the celebrity sightings, aren't I?

Meanwhile, with dozens of empty seats at gate D2, some woman with a suitcase, a giant purse and an ugly canvas tote bag big enough to hold a full-grown collie had to sit practically on top of me, at which point she proceeded, with maximum fidgeting and fussing which entailed knocking into me several times with her raised elbow, to stuff her purse into the tote bag in an effort to make it seem like she's actually only carrying two bags onto the plane.

I wish her luck cramming her shit into an overhead and under the seat in front of her. The equipment on these ORD runs is inevitably an MD-80, which is basically a yellow schoolbus with wings.

My trip was only booked yesterday, so I've got that choice row 31 seat next to the engine. On the upside, it is a bulkhead seat so my little legs have some stretchin room.

See you in Chicago, where a stroll through O'Hare makes me feel positively slender!

A Football Question

Why are the Denver Broncos wearing yellow and brown unis today? What kind of color is BROWN for a football team? Unless it's your team name, of course, but then that begs the question -- what the heck kind of name is the Browns?

But back to the Broncos: I'm always happy when weenie Tom Brady and his dickhead cheater coach get bested, which is what just happened. Belichick is a known and admitted cheater -- why is he even allowed to take one step onto a football field?

The Boys of Winter

I'm still on west coast time, and out of Lunesta, so I'm not ready to sleep yet...

I think nearly every team in the NHL was playing tonight, and while cruising my digital cable menu, I made the happily accidental discovery that Time Warner is either running a free promotion or -- gloria in exelsius! -- I actually have the NHL Network.


Woo-hoo, right?

Well, it was a pretty "woo-hoo" moment for me -- I thought I was going to have to either go the entire season watching the Rangers, Islanders, or (God help me) the Devils, wait until the playoffs to see my favorite team in action, or become a high-functioning alcoholic cruising the sports bars of the West Side in search of Penguins hockey. You die-hard football fans only have to worry about one night a week for your sports fix; do you know how many hockey games there are in a season? Jesus wept.

Tonight the Penguins played at the Maple Leafs (Toronto). It was a rout by the Pens, of course, who have brought forward most of their Cup-winning line from last year (minus Cup-clincher Max Talbot who is out recuperating from shoulder surgery -- better now than later, I say -- big Hal Gill, and Miroslav Satan, who is in free agency now and has yet to be picked up by another franchise...I'm a little bummed about that, but mostly because now I won't be able to get a T-shirt with SATAN written across the back).

Coach Dan Bylsma seemed to be working his different lines, mixing and matching throughout the whole game, so we saw all the key guys getting plenty of ice time. The Pens played hustle hockey tonight, which is good to see after they were surprised by Phoenix last week ("what the -- ?") and then had a struggle to beat the Flyers.

Honestly, it wasn't much of a challenge for my boys, it looked like a pre-season scrimmage at times, with a lot of blue jerseys standing around while the Pens shot past them. At the end of the first period the Pens were 14-2 shots on goal. And after both goals scored by Toronto, the Pens came back to score within 30 seconds. Two goals for Crosby.

It was like watching one of those old Harlem Globetrotters games, and the Leafs were the Washington Generals. I kept waiting for Sidney "Meadowlark" Crosby to pants someone and Evgeni "Curly" Malkin to toss a bucket of confetti into the audience.

Colton Orr (Toronto) lived up to his goon rep and was up to his old tricks, starting not one, but two fights -- on two different face-offs! -- and spending a good chunk of time in the box.

Nice to see Billy Guerin putting in his shifts when it was optional tonight. He admitted he was going to sit this one out but got shamed into playing by his teammates. He's a former NJ Devil, but I don't hold that against him.

We didn't get to see much of badass Brooks Orpik because he took a hit that put his face into the glass and sat him down for the rest of the game. After he got himself up on all fours with his eyes spinning in his head, you could practically see the birds tweeting around his head all the way back to the bench.

I'll be watching big Jordan Staal this season -- the kid is just growing and growing, and is a superstar in the making.

Penguins, 5-2

Afterthought; How will the loss of Johan Franzen affect the Red Wings this year? He's out for at LEAST four months with a torn ACL.

Well, the Little Cat is giving me her bedroom eyes, so I think I shall retire with Dr. HS Thompson and his bitter musings on sports and life in post-9/11 America.

My Idea of Happiness

My flight boarded on time, and we landed 45 minutes early. I sat across the aisle from Evan Lysacek (yes, I am a figure-skating geek, too). Wished him luck in Vancouver as we got off the plane.

Greeted with feline joy upon opening my apartment door. The little cat has glued herself to my side. The old man, too.

Transferred 9 days of dirty laundry from my suitcase to the laundry bag to be dealt with tomorrow.

Craig Ferguson had Gerard Butler as a guest and ended his show with a farting kitten. Maybe you had to see it to appreciate just how funny it was.

Bravo is showing "Goodfellas."

"Please stop feeding the dog from the table from the plate on top of it." (Spoken by the brilliant Lorraine Bracco)

My pleasures are small ones and I am glad to be home.

Oh, and our President won the Nobel Peace Prize. Maybe, just maybe, we will finally get to see Rush Limbaugh "explode like a bag of meat dropped from a helicopter." (Bill Maher)

Keep Those Warrantless Wiretaps Coming

You know what? Back when all of that FISA stuff first happened, in the darkness of the Bush-Cheney years, I was almost violently opposed to this whole "warrantless wiretap" thing. It's unconstitutional, right?

But still...

Now that threats against our President have increased by 400%, a poll appears on Facebook asking "Should Obama be killed?" and shit like this appears ALL THE TIME, I say, warrentlessly wiretap away, FBI! CIA! SECRET SERVICE! NSA!

I hope that everyone who pulls this unpatriotic bullshit is tracked and tagged like a rogue coyote so the US Government knows where they are at every moment. In fact, I hope the TSA has their little travel records marked so they get the extra special "bend over and cough" searches every time they try to get on an airplane.

Frankly, I'm scared of these crazy people.

On the other hand, maybe they'll just die out at their own hands, like these two maroons.

Coupla dead gun nuts?

NO BIG LOSS

Jesus Edited out of New Conservative Bible for Being Too Liberal

All of that loaves and fishes to feed the multitudes, and helping poor people and sick people, throwing the moneylenders out of the temple crap is just too liberal, I guess.

WTF?

I Want to Go Home!

I miss the Little Cat. And the scary old "Portrait of Dorian Cat" toothless bag of bones one, too. (Though he's looking more like the portrait than the preternaturally youthful avatar, I don't discriminate because of looks. He WAS there first, and he honestly can't help being a cranky, needy, pissy old gay man. When he was young and beautiful, he was Rock Hudson in the Doris Day years. So now he's Quentin Crisp, what are you gonna do?)

Um, Didn't We Already Know About That?

Sometimes, an editor just needs to re-read the headline before hitting publish.

Happy Birthday to Me!

Yesterday was my birthday, and Judy decided that there was no way I was going to spend the day alone in Hermosa Beach.

So she whisked me off to Malibu. First stop, the Getty Villa, where we wandered the galleries until art fatigue set in. When it comes to museums, I've got about an hour and half, two hours -- tops -- in me. Then I start wandering aimlessly, woolgathering while gazing with tilted head at carved Roman busts, thinking to myself, "Wow, the Italians were really hot in those days, look at the cheekbones on Caligula!" or while staring into a vitrine holding the treasures from an Egyptian tomb, "I would totally wear those earrings that were buried with that queen, I wonder if they have knockoffs for sale in the gift shop," instead of serious arty thoughts like, "Wow, that is some important archeological shit they dug up."



We had lunch at someplace called the Malibu Country Mart. I was very excited because I thought that I might at last get to sample the local charms of Southern California, and that it might have stalls featuring local artisans. What it turned out to be was a mall. A very expensive mall, but a mall. On the upside, we sat next to Pierce Brosnan at lunch, and yes, he is still gorgeous. On the further upside, how can you not love a man who could have any supermodel on the planet and still chooses his chubby wife? I love that about him.

We drove back down the PCH to Santa Monica, where we had a drink at The Lobster while eavesdropping on a semi-drunk semi-pro named Sylvia (who, I want to know, under the age of 60 is named "Sylvia"? Working girls, I guess) fending off the advances of a horny drunken local while planning another assignation. One side of her loud bar cellphone convo: "Do you want to meet me at my hotel room or here at the bar?" Drunken local removed himself to the other side of the bar, where he proceeded to cast hurt looks in her direction when her "friend," some acne-scarred, Ed Hardy-wearing d-bag showed up. It was all so amusing.

Then it was off to dinner at The Hump.

Ohhhh, The Hump. Where does one begin to describe it? I can't. Except to say it was the best sushi I have ever eaten in my life. And in this funky little restaurant at the SANTA MONICA AIRPORT of all places. I KNOW. If you are ever in Santa Monica, with someone who has an expense account, make them take you to The Hump. Make sure there is an expense account involved, or if you are taking a date, make sure that the lay of a lifetime is guaranteed at the end of the night, because being presented with the bill may make your heart stop for a moment or two, and you want to be sure to get your money's worth. I'm not saying I would automatically put out for someone who took me to The Hump -- oh, well, who am I kidding? Actually, yes, yes I would put out for this sushi.

Greetings from LA (again)

Yes, I'm back in Los Angeles for another 9 days. The weather has been gorgeous since I arrived and I plan on getting in some quality beach time over the weekend.

Today we ate lunch at a venerable old Mexican restaurant located on the fringe of South Central. See photo above.

I don't understand when Angelenos talk about "the 'hood" as we're supposedly driving through it. My rep wanted to avoid the 405 coming back to Hawthorne, and so we drove back through "the 'hood," meaning South Central and Inglewood, which frankly, looked a lot nicer than my crappy neighborhood (Bushwick) in Brooklyn. Everytime she said, "this is the 'hood," I looked out of the car windows expecting to see junkies shooting up on street corners, layabouts trading cash for AK-47's out of the trunks of cars, trash in heaps, and burnt-out cars on the sidewalks. You know, like parts of New York, or Newark. Instead, I saw tidy, well-kept single-family homes (albeit some with bars on the windows), with nice, if not necessarily new, cars parked in front, and working class people going about their business.

I see scarier teenagers outside the Grand Street High School next to my subway stop, fachrissakes. We're talking oversized North Face parkas in July scary, you know what I'm talkin' about?

Is "the 'hood" a state of mind? Or do we have a different reality altogether in New York? Maybe it's all the sunshine.

Sully's Back in the Cockpit

...and did you know that there is now a new mandatory training module for Airbus pilots?