WE NEED MORE BALLOONS! DNC dude Don Mischer's "more balloons" tirade (apparently caught live last night on CNN) ruled.

It almost sounds as if my pal Dick Costolo scripted it:

'Go balloons, go balloons! Go balloons! I don't see anything happening. Go balloons! Go balloons! Go balloons! Standby confetti. Keep coming, balloons. More balloons. Bring it- balloons, balloons, balloons! We want balloons, tons of them. Bring them down. Let them all come. No confetti. No confetti yet. 'No confetti. All right, go balloons, go balloons. We need more balloons. All balloons! All balloons! Keep going! Come on, guys, lets move it. Jesus! We need more balloons. I want all balloons to go, goddammit. Go confetti. Go confetti. More confetti. I want more balloons. What's happening to the balloons? We need more balloons.'We need all of them coming down. Go balloons- balloons? What's happening balloons? There's not enough coming down! All balloons, what the hell! There's nothing falling! What the fuck are you guys doing up there? We want more balloons coming down, more balloons. More balloons. More balloons'... "

What a nut!

CAFFEINATED KERRY: This guy agrees. Kerry blew it.

RAW DEAL: Just back from an empty nearby sushi joint where I popped for a high-priced lunch. I go there every now and again and am known to many of the folk there. Which made my recent troubles all the more odd...

I order a Coke, as I often do, and receive a very flat, light brown Diet Coke instead. "Ummm, can I get a regular Coke, please," I ask my nice waitress.

She comes back with a really flat, light brown Coke. "Ummm, this is flat, or maybe the syrup is low, or probably both," I tell her.

"I get you new one," she says.

She comes back with the same thing.

"Still bad," I say.

She goes away and comes back again.

"You in luck," she says. "Found a bottle. This last one from bottle."

It's flat. It's light brown. It ain't from no bottle.

"Ummmm, maybe can I just get a ginger ale?"

She goes away and the skinny manager-lady starts gesticulating at me from behind the bar, pointing the soda-gun at me and shaking it. "This good!" she says angrily. "Nothing wrong! Good Coke!" She's not smiling, and her body is rigid. Her lips are drawn taut across her teeth in a sneer.

"Not good Coke," I say. "But I don't want to argue. I just want a ginger ale."

"This good Coke! Nothing wrong!" she insists, loudly, from across the restaurant.

"The Coke is fucked up," mumbles one of the sushi chefs behind the sushi bar.

My food comes and my order is wrong. I tell my waitress I wrote down a spicy tuna handroll and a tuna/avocado maki roll, and that she's delivered a spicy tuna handroll and a spicy tuna/avocado maki roll. I see the manager-lady shaking her head from across the bar. The waitress just looks at me with a little smile, as if to say, "I'll stand here all day, but that's all you're getting, mister."

I eat my wrong roll. I sip on my flat ginger ale, which has been placed alongside two bad attempts at Coke, left there perhaps to remind me that I'm a picky asshole.

I sign the $35 bill and figure out why this place is always empty.

ME NO LIKE HILLARY EITHER: I'm half-pleased with something I wrote in Just Procrastinating's comment feature:

Hillary is flat-out tone deaf to her own vocal presence. She's awful, frowny, and awkward, as if she were being maneuvered by an arthritic puppeteer and voiced by a non-native speaker who's mastered pronunciation but not inflection...

Sometimes I get very attached to my own perceived/imaginary cleverness.

LET'S NOT PRETEND KERRY IS A GOOD SPEAKER: I only saw clips from the Kerry speech last night. (I was flying back from Dallas and only arrived home near the end.) I rewound our Tivo and caught some of it until my wife made me switch to the local news. Then they played five or so clips. Then I caught some more this morning.

I'm not going to base my vote on a speech. But boy was that a dud. Kerry was sweaty, rushed, and unconvincing. A stellar orator he is not. Of course Bush is no Martin Luther King Jr. himself. Still, I was shocked to hear people saying he gave "the speech of his life." I mean, c'mon. I may vote for him, but he was abysmal. Gore had more charisma.

All I kept thinking was, Boy is this whole thing hokey. Can the chorus of "help is on the way," take off your funny hats, and just distribute a one-sided, bullet-pointed sheet of where you are on the issues, who's endorsing you, etc. If generals endorse you, great. If fat ladies in silly hats cheer you, no big whoop.

So I guess I'm burned out on the Dem convention. And the only reason I'm looking forward to the Republicans' event -- well, wait, there are two reasons:

1. Wanna see McCain speak. He's always great.
2. Wanna see W. speak. He's always entertaining, if only 'cause his style is not unlike a drunk on a tightrope in his boxer shorts, not aware he's drunk, not aware he's on a tightrope, and not aware we can see his balls from where we're sitting.

CALL ME A SUCKER FOR CONVENTION RHETORIC: This time from a Dallas airport lounge...

Okay, so now I'm listing Kerryward. An e-mail to Andrew Sullivan summarizes my feelings nicely. An excerpt:

"I'm a social libertarian, fiscally conservative, hawk -- an eagle, in your lexicon. In the past, I've been willing to give Democrats a chance. I voted for Clinton in 1992, although I soon regretted it. Since 9/11, I've morphed into a one-issue voter -- the war on terrorism, at home and abroad. And until recently, my efforts to be open to John Kerry ran aground whenever I considered who the terrorists would rather see elected. And my anxiety only intensified after recent reports on pre-election terrorism attacks. Surely the terrorists' rationale for such attacks would be to help elect Kerry, a la Spain. I'm not sure American voters would react the way Spaniards did, but the terrorists may not appreciate the resolve of the American heartland.But if the terrorists were listening to Edwards last night, and Obama the night before, they may be second-guessing their plans. If the Kerry camp's war rhetoric is in earnest (and there are good reasons to doubt it), then the terrorists may not get the easier ride they were strategizing for."

Go read the whole thing. Well worth it. Bottom line is if I believed Kerry was every bit as hawkish on terror as Bush (just smarter), and if I believed Kerry favored personal responsibility and accountabilty over government subsidy/assistance, then he's my guy. He's obviously smarter, more courageous, and more qualified than our current president.

One thing that still pisses me off are the literal nobs who keep acting as if Bush is some sort of evil genius (even as they call him an idiot), some kind of grand-plan conspiracy master who's managed to create a profitable new chaos for himself and his best pals the Bin Ladens.

So even though I may -- MAY -- vote Kerry, I'll still think Michael Moore is just as big, fat and idiotic as Rush Limbaugh, and that the Hollyweird liberal set (for which Timothy Robbins and Sean Penn have become poster boys) are pompous poopheads.

Oh, and liked that spiked Ann Coulter column, even though I'm generally no fan of hers. Go figure.

WHERE I BE? I was at my 20th high school reunion over the long weekend. So much to process and maybe even post about. But just thought I should let my few faithful readers know why I've been quiet for the past few days. More from the road on the 'morrow, as my week launches off to the Big Apple and the Big D. See you back here soon...

NEVER BE IDLE: Oh, great. So in-flight cell phones are just over the horizon. Before long it'll be normal to e-mail, call, and just generally be productive on the flight. Joy.

What's next? Stair-steppers attached to the barber chair? Laptops embedded under massage tables? Constant productivity is way overrated.

RECALLING THE WHITE FLAG: Okay, so I don't give up on the Cubs. I take it back. But man-oh-man were they embarassing yesterday. I was so thrilled to see them put eight runs on Matt Morris early...and then I sat there in disbelief as they found various ways the rest of the game to play bad and look worse, resulting in a backbreaking loss.

Still, there was that little glimmer in the ninth where I sensed they just might come back. And so I started feeling bad about my post, my early white flag. Thing is this team is still dead-center in the wildcard race, still a formidable club that can beat anyone on any given day.

So now I'm looking for Hendry to make a deal. We need a shortstop and some bullpen help, for sure. We could probably use another super-sub, given that Hollandsworth may be out for a while and Aramis is a gimp. C'mon, Hendry. Nose back to grindstone. Phone to shoulder. I promise not to give up if you don't.

Meanwhile, it's time to see some character from this team. No more temper tantrums. No more excuses. Let's see how big a dent we can put into St. Looey's 10-game lead. Let's see how quickly we can lock up the wildcard. And let's see a chance for vengeance against those Cardinals in the playoffs. Heck, screw vengeance. Let's redeem ourselves, earn back some of the respect that was handed away in the past 48 hours.

I AM A BIG SUCKER: The Cubs have totally self-destructed in the past 24 hours. Miserable. Is it hockey season yet?
 
Thank God NASCAR revs it up again this weekend. I need a diversion.

SEMANTICS: I agree with Schwarzenegger, although I don't think he should have used the term "girly men." "Great big pussies" might have been more apt.

CYBER-SISTERS AND ME: I guess I disagree pretty evenly with BOTH of my sisters-in-law from time to time. Still, they're both great people, both interesting and smart. All the Hess boys have been lucky in love.
 
One of the sisters-in-law, Paula, writes phaneromania, among other things. The other, Laurel, is a frequent Blind Camel reader and commenter, and now she's started to do the same on Paula's blog. Right now, we're all weighing in on a discussion of fraternity/sorority life, pro and con, etc. A pretty amazing thing that we can have this conversation in this way...

BLOGGER BETTER: Looks like Blogger has really improved the "Edit Posting" interface, with all manner of easy, training-wheels tags for losers like me. Check it out:

"This is a blockquote."
- Scott Hess

 
You can also do colors...
 

BLAH BLAH BLAH: I got to hang out in the pits and the garages at the Chicagoland Speedway, in advance of last Saturday's Tropicana 400 (NASCAR) race. I met and shook hands with my favorite driver, Jimmy Johnson, and I stood about a foot away from most of the cars that would later hurtle around the track at around 200 MPH. Then I watched the race itself from a corporate box above the start/finish line, and I won $250 in a pick-the-winner pool. (I blindly drew race winner and controversy-hound Tony Stewart.)

I spent Monday and Tuesday in the Pacific Northwest, nestled in amidst mountains and tall trees. Oh, and there's water flowing here, there, and everywhere. Very pretty.

Yesterday I flew first class back from Seattle and sat next to a young, smart United pilot. He answered a bunch of my dumb questions about flying, and he told me turbulence to a pilot is just like waves to a guy driving a boat: no big deal, just something you have to maneuver through. He made several analogies between air and water, and said driving a plane is also alot like driving a submarine. Anyway, for this nervous flyer, it was a big help to hear from a guy who lives half his life aloft.

What else? I'm glad Bush's gay-marriage amendment got smashed. I'm glad Tony Blair is off the hook in the UK, just as Bush is (or should be) here. (I'm referring to the two recent intelligence inquiries that found that the pre-war intelligence was faulty, not the leaders' judgement.) Neither one of these guys acted recklessly in sending troops to oust Hussein. That's my view and I'm sticking with it. I think the two inquiries support that view.

I listened to the Smiths "Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now" in the car today, and I laughed out loud. "I was looking for a job and then I found a job/And heaven knows I'm miserable now." Indeed!

LIVE FROM SOFTWARE CENTRAL: Little to say today, save for the fact that, ironically, I'm on via dialup from Bellevue, WA, just a short jaunt away from the software capitol of the world: Redmond.

Some of my stress fell away yesterday, and some of it lingers. I've had the good sense to go running each of the last two mornings, and it's true there's no substitute for exercise when you need to clear a cloudy mind. Still, what's plaguing me is more central, the question of how to spend my fleeting life and time. I have the best job I've ever had, in many respects, and still I'm not very happy. The good news is I can see the solution...now it's just a matter of enacting it.

Sucks to have to have this blog be so veiled, eh? I've never been as good with the reckless public disclosure stuff as some of my blogging brethren. For better and for worse, I'm sure.

LIVE FROM LUMBER COUNTRY: Online from Portland (Oregon) today. Have been re-learning lessons about stress and how it can manifest itself in a million different ways. More on that when I have a free moment. In the meantime, let me simply note that it's awfully pretty out here this time of year. My view is framed by mountains and washed in green, gold, and a sleepy brown.

VOICE OF REASON? Am listening to a CNN press conference about the Senate Intelligence Committee report on WMD in Iraq and am struck by how impressive and reasonable the committee chair, Kansas senator Pat Roberts, comes across. He's old and not especially telegenic...but he seems "presidential" as hell. I'm gonna keep my eye on the guy. Maybe he actually favors stem-cell research and same-sex marriage.

A BETTER MAC ATTACK: Here's a better evaluation of what's wrong with the Mac show.

STINKERMAN: Hit the 12:01AM showing of Will Ferrell's new ANCHORMAN tonight (this morning) across the street from the hotel. Sadly, it was just as I suspected. More dumb than funny. Sure, there are some moments. I'm too tired to recount them. Before I retire, though, it's my duty to tell you this: Wait for HBO, or at the very least, BLOCKBUSTER. This is lighter fare than even ELF or OLD SCHOOL. This ninety-minute movie had less big belly laughs than a single SNL skit. A few good sight gags and cameos, a couple funny facial expressions and ad-libbed lines, but in general a sprawling mess of a costume comedy stretched three times too long.

MAC IS BACK AND STILL SUCKS: The second night of MCENROE was nearly as awful as the first. Mac seems to be scolding more than hosting the show. Somehow he turned telling Ralph Nader that he'd voted for him in the last election into a harangue, and he made it seem like Nader was only there to hawk his book. (Mac would grudgingly wave it around at odd intervals.)

Next came the ridiculous Lars and James from Metallica. Lars is about 5'2" and extra dorky, hardly the brooding, intense rock drummer of legend. And James is a gangly lerch, sort of like a stretched-out Jeff Bagwell with an extra helping of self-consciousness. They were shilling for their documentary, which came across as unwittingly comical (a sort of real-life SPINAL TAP), when they seemed to be aiming for poignant.

Finally Mac grumped at Karch Kiraly, the aging beach volleyballer. It was a mess. A mess, I tell you.

ONE SHINING MOMENT: Okay, there was one highlight on the miserable MCENROE debut last night. Asked to explain how he's managed to stay in such good shape all these years, Sting thought about it and replied: "Vanity."

Of course that didn't make up for the "it can't get any worse -- oh no, it's getting worse" nature of the rest of the show. The finale -- Johnny Mac playing audibly poor guitar (for gosh sakes, if he sucks just turn him down! worked for Bob Weir) backing his wife -- was creepy, awkward, and hard to watch. As the credits rolled to the strains of "Goodbye to You" (with Sting attempted to lend ear-cupped backing vocals) one could hardly muster anything but sympathy for the tennis brat and his television brethren.

THIS SHOW CANNOT BE SERIOUS: Am about twenty minutes into watching the trainwreck that is the MCENROE show on CNBC. Although I've been a McEnroe fan over the years, there's no denying he's more wooden than Trump, more awkward than Chevy, and more impatient than...well, I mean, his timing is horrendous. He's almost annoyed at the audience as they clap and laugh at Will Ferrell. Johnny Mac is so unfunny and uncomfortable he's almost destroying Ferrell's dead-center comedic genius. Unreal.

FROM A GARDEN STATE STARBUCKS: More randomness from the road, maybe this time on men and male friends and such. Because when it's time for a husband to fall apart a little bit, to be uncertain or stressed, to seem less than powerful, to spend a moment outside the bounds of traditional masculinity -- and let's say the husband is just tired, has spent too much time on the road, has spent too little time sleeping, and is finding his brain so fully occupied by work so as to squeeze out the other more important stuff -- who is he to turn to? I'd argue he shouldn't turn to his pregnant wife. I'd argue she has enough on her mind, that she looks to her husband for power and certitude and will be uncomfortable seeing him a mess.

And thus the need for strong male friendships, for having guy friends who will listen to and allow your gripes and doubts, and who will reveal their own.

But who has time for friends?

Something's not entirely right with this equation. Love the job, hate the lifestyle. Something's gotta give, and rather than writing about it here I need to be talking about it in a concrete building in Northbrook, Illinois.

Read this post now and fast, 'cause it's probably coming down sometime soon.

WHAT YOU TALKIN' BOUT, CAMEL? No, Morgan, I didn't spend the weekend in the Denver airport lounge.

Instead it was a whirlwind weekend, with family in from the Detroit-ish area and all manner of outbound events (the Lincoln Park Zoo, the Chicago Botanic Garden, a mom-mandated trip to Chipotle, etc.) on our schedule (pronounced "shed-yule").

Don't know where to start so I'll just start...

Woke up sweaty at 4AM...actually, wait...went to bed at an unchacteristically early 9:30PM last night and, given my current work schedule and recent habit of late nights and early flights (wow, that would be a great yuppie album title: LATE NIGHTS AND EARLY FLIGHTS), woke up sweaty and ready to work at 1:15AM. (Another great yuppie record title: SWEATY AND READY TO WORK; could also work as a porno title.)

So at 1AMish my dog Vladi was conducting his nightly toe-nail-noisy shuffle from the bathroom tiles onto the hardwood and then plopping onto his understuffed bed with a leaky sigh. I knew how he felt. My lower back was sore from doing basically nothing but living, I was sweaty from humidity and a 12-hour decongestant, and I was running through my upcoming itineraries and deadlines in my brain. Somehow I drifted off again into a sweaty dreamscape for another three hours or so, but at 4AM I knew there were no more slumbers coming for this blogger. I adjourned to my study, checked the weather and sunrise time on my computer (this despite the fact I'm an avowed non weather-checker), then set off for an hour walk-jog around my little corner of Chicago.

I thought of a David Eggers piece I read yesterday in SPIN, a sort of celebration of the band Big Country, especially their album THE CROSSING. And I remembered thinking, as I read it, that Eggers is not a better writer than me (okay, okay, feel free to pot-shot me here and now, readers), but that he's just more fearless and honest. Celebrating Big Country, a band most take for one-hit wonders! What stones, I thought as I came across the article. This Eggers will write about anything.

And then I read it and I know he's right, he's right, and I start mentally digging for my Big Country discs, all part of the Great Unwashed Music Pile (GUMP) that litters my study and the basement and my car's trunk, so much so that I've considered hiring someone to sort through and re-case and re-file all my wayward music. I come across the song "In a Big Country" on my wife's 80's disc as I drove home last night, and it is almost too poignant to be true: "I'm not expecting to grow flowers in a desert, but I can live and breathe and see the sun in wintertime." Amen, Stuart.

So many other things came to me, visited me on my walk, to the extent that I remembered thinking on some earlier walk that I should never be walkless again, because walks are when my brain has a chance to defragment, to clean up lost clusters and/or find new hard disk space for future memories.

Bought two new discs last night (and I thought this morning about the phrase "chasing the dragon," meant to describe how drug addicts [especially crackheads] are constantly re-seeking that high, the feeling, trying to "get normal" by catching the dragon's tail [you know, the firebreather, the crack pipe] just one more time, and I thought how that's sort of like how I buy records and books, hoping that maybe just one of them will hit just the right note, get me off the consumption treadmill, answer The Question), the new one from The Cure and then a new one from some group called PepLab. And the first sounds like it should and will hopefully grow on me, but the second is just a full-on dance party right out of the box, what the label sticker describes as Rick James meets Crystal Method. It fulfills the "soundtrack for a big black car" requirement, music that complements the leather seats and the lightly tinted windows and my chin-down driving style. In the words of Freddie "Boom Boom" Washington, it's music that has a certain "Hi there" quality.

My two-year-old son answers the following questions expertly:

Q: What does Ed McMahon say?
A: Hi-O!

Q: What does Hank Kingsley say?
A: Hey now!

Q: What does Fonzie say?
A: Aaaaaaayyyyyyyyy!

Q: What does Mork from Ork say?
A: Shazbat.

Q: What does Gary Coleman say?
A: What you talking 'bout Willis?

LINGERING IN THE LOUNGE: Chillin' in the Denver airport Red Carpet Club, eating mini-bagels schmeared with mixed fruit spread. I'm just about the only guy in here, and I can't help but think this might be a good place for a vacation. Although there's not much to eat, there are current newspapers, a bar, TVs everywhere, wireless Internet, etc. They should sell memberships to stressed parents. You get a babysitter, stash some take-out in some luggage, and head over to the Red Carpet Club during off-hours. It's like a little oasis of calm...and the fact that it's plopped into the middle of a bustling airport makes that calm all the more exquisite.