VIVA! Off to Vegas today through Sunday. Sitting in Red Carpet Club, waiting on a plane. Bloody Mary? Not yet.

BATTLE OF THE BIG CHEFS: Two of Chicago's superstar chefs are engaging in a highly personal war of words...over foie gras. Thing I can't understand: How can you defend the practice of force-feeding ducks? Gross.

Okay, I don't eat much meat these days. Only fish, actually, for like the past four years or so. Nonetheless I *do* get how some people -- most people -- can eat meat. I get it. It's just not for me.

But I *don't* get foie gras. I don't get veal. I don't get doing stuff that is so blatantly cruel, stuff where the cruelty is right out front in the debate. You can pretend not to know about how pigs and chickens are tortured from birth. But we've all seen the veal-fattening pens. We've all heard about how ducks become foie gras.

What excuse is there?

GERE ASTAIRE STRIKES AGAIN: This Richard Gere story is disturbingly close to something you would see in THE ONION. (Mom and Dad, the onion is a satirical newspaper, sort of like a smart MAD magazine.)

The first two paragraphs are awesome:

TOKYO (Reuters) - Expecting no more than light chit-chat about ballroom dancing, reporters in Tokyo were startled when actor Richard Gere launched into a condemnation of Europe's plans to lift an arms embargo against China.

After promoting his new film "Shall We Dance?," in which he co-stars with Jennifer Lopez, Gere grabbed a microphone to denounce plans by the European Union to lift the embargo imposed after China's bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protests in 1989.

Don't get me wrong. I find plenty to admire about Richard Gere. But there's no denying the comedy of it all. (And yes, comedy and tragedy are often seatmates.)

TURN IT UP: My wife and sons have been out of town this month, hunkered down in Florida with both sides of grandparents. I was with them for a week, then down for another weekend. But...

...for much of the month I've been in our house alone. And when I'm not feeling especially melancholy about their absence, there's one thing I've been doing a lot of...

Not that.

Playing music loud!

I hadn't really noticed it until they left, but it's been ages since I've been in the house alone with the stereo up loud. My God is it fun!

Most fun songs of the past few hours:

"Radio," by Rancid
"Dreaming," by Blondie
"God Tells Me To," by the Ass Ponys
"Down," by 311
"Keep It Clean," by Camera Obscura
"Snot," by Snot

UNREAL ENTERTAINMENT: Just watched an episode of Wayne Newton's THE ENTERTAINER on the E! channel. It's pretty much THE APPRENTICE does Vegas, with contestants vying for a big-money prize and a chance to become a star on The Strip. Yuck.

What can I say...it's one of the most bizarre, laughing at not with things I've ever seen. How to describe it...must...find...words. Look, let's just say that this episode centered on the heartbreak of a prop comic. Enough said.

Oh, and Sir Newton was wearing a bizarre camouflage ribbed muscle shirt and a dome of hair that resembled a bike helmet made of black cotton candy.

BIG THANKS: Just wanted to take a second to acknowledge how much I enjoy and appreciate all the smart, insightful, personal, funny, and great contributions y'all make in the COMMENTS section. It's really tremendous. Makes me proud, humble, and happy.

LAID-BACK, INDEED: Another truly great hip-hop cover.

YOU DOWN WITH POB? I've been hearing stories about Pat O'Brien excesses over the years. In my various travels in and around the media/entertainment space, it seems everyone's got a POB tale. Anyhow, this NY Daily News gossip piece is funny and sad. The guy sure sounds like a self-obsessed nut job!

WOW, TECHNOLOGY: Kinda neat that I'm able to look at the grim traffic ahead of me, jump off the expressway, hunker down wirelessly in a Starbucks, watch the traffic flow online, and eventually jump back on the highway when it abates sufficiently. Sort of a good metaphor for how 'Net connections can de-friction many aspects of life.

MORE INFO ABOUT SCHIAVO: Another really helpful article on the Schiavo case, this time arguing that the legal and medical questions are not in doubt at all (as Bart and Steve have argued in COMMENTS).

SAVE SCHIAVO? I don't recall which side of the political divide Fred Barnes sits on. And I realize there's likely a whole 'nother side to the Schiavo story than the one he writes here. Nonetheless, the article sure makes a lot of sense to me.

UNFLAPPABLE: For whatever reason I much prefer Bush's "sleeps-through-everything" image to Clinton's "stays-up-all-night-fretting" image. From DRUDGE:

President Bush was asleep, came out in hallway, signed Schiavo bill and went back to bed
Mon Mar 21 2005 13:03:56 ET
Q Can you go over what went on last night, in terms of the President signing the bill and how it went down?

MR. McCLELLAN, WHITE HOUSE: Sure. I guess the bill -- the House passed it shortly after midnight, and then the President signed it at 1:11 a.m., in the morning. The Staff Secretary, Brett Kavanaugh, walked the legislation over to the residence for the President to sign. He came outside his bedroom and signed it in the residence.

Q Had he been asleep?

MR. McCLELLAN: Yes, he was woken up after it was passed, when it was ready to be signed.

Q I heard you describe it earlier, he came out of his bedroom and literally signed it standing up in the hall; is that how it went/

MR. McCLELLAN: That's correct, yes. He was just standing in the hall in the residence an signed the legislation then.

Q Was he wearing --

Q Is it safe to assume he wasn't wearing a suit and tie at the time? (Laughter.)

MR. McCLELLAN: I'm not going into that much detail. Yes, he cleaned up, put on his suit -- (laughter.)

END

GONNA GET YOU: Seems like it's time for a picture...so here's one of my son running on the Siesta Key beach, his camera-toting dad in hot pursuit.

CHECK IT: A good article on the MLB steroid scandal, post Congressional testimony.

BACK TO BLOGGING WITH BLATHER: It's always tough after days away to launch back into blogging.

Here are some randoms:

Watched the Belle & Sebastian DVD last weekend. It's called FANS ONLY, and it hammers home what a delightful and unique band this is. If you've not discovered them yet, go find some audio clips from their record IF YOU'RE FEELING SINISTER. I think you might like it.

Was listening to a soundtrack in the car this morning on the way out to work -- Mark Knopfler's work on METROLAND. Great disc -- haven't ever seen the movie! -- and at one point, out of the blue, "Sultans of Swing" comes on. Talk about a song that has held up over the years.

Have any of y'all ever heard Slobberbone? Great beer-drenched alt-country, especially the song "Your Excuse." Love it.

Wish I knew more about the Schiavo case. I know that part of life is dying...but I have a hard time arguing with Bush's statement that our laws ought to err in favor of respecting life. Anyone know a good article where I can get myself caught up on this case? I'm way too uninformed to leap into this fray.

Got an "out-of-print 41-track retrospective CD" of tracks from the band Sneeze today. Don't know much about 'em, save for the track "Shaky Ground" is a big favorite of mine.

BTW, don't overlook Sade and Dido.

Okay, I'm back in it, this blogging. God knows why *this* post with *this* mishmash of music musing and then one quick and shallow nod to a right-to-live/right-to-die battle.

I want to make a soundtrack to a movie that will never exist. That's one thing I know for sure.

THE REAL HITCH IS NOT A DUMB MOVIE STARRING WILL SMITH: Christopher Hitchens weighs in with a sober (funny adjective when appended to Hitchens) analysis of what the recent "organized looting" stories really mean.

I'd hat-tip Sullivan for first pointing out the article, but heck, I may as well hat-tip him for just about every sentence of politics I attempt to inject in this blog. He's been a huge, huge influence on me. Not exactly the letter of his politics, mind you, but the fact that one's social orientation, education, taste in the arts, etc., need not prescribe one's ideological affiliation.

COMPELLING CONTENDER: Saw my first episode (actually the show's third) of THE CONTENDER (the boxing reality show) last night and loved it. Stallone is goofy and Sugar Ray is oddly bug-eyed (face lift?), but there's no substitute for the pure human drama it portrays. Sure, I'm something of a boxing fan, but you don't have to be a boxing fan to get hooked at all. It's like THE APPRENTICE, except in the boardroom those vying for elimation get to kick each other's ass, physically.

I think this show will rise, ratings-wise, on good word of mouth. Like this post, for example.

GAY? FELON? FOOLISH? I give the bloodhounds of journalism (or Drudge) 72 hours to figure out what's behind Mario Vazquez's AMERICAN IDOL departure. So, by that calculation, you should be reading the real story before the weekend.

WAIT 'TIL THIS YEAR? Last year everything looked GREAT pre-season for the Cubbies...and they couldn't get it done. This year everything looks SHIT for the Cubbies pre-season...so maybe this sense of foreboding will be rewarded with a ring.

SHE BEATIN' HIM! This is one of the funniest things I've heard in a long time. (Here's the backstory.)

MIXED MUSING ON PORNO AND GANGSTA RAP: If you haven't heard Ben Folds' earnest reading of Dr. Dre's "Bitches Ain't Shit (But Hos and Tricks)," you really owe it to yourself to do so. Folds, as expected, sits at the piano and tenderly croons Dre lyrics (verbatim) that include:

Bitches ain't shit but hoes and tricks
Lick on deez nutz and suck the dick
Get's the fuck out after you're done
And I hops in my ride to make a quick run...

To hear Ben's tender tenor wrap itself around Dre's comic-book tale...well, it's to truly grasp the out-and-out ridiculousness of gangsta rap (and mind you, I'm an admitted fan of the genre). (It's also friggin' hilarious, for sure.)

That there are people that take Dre and Snoop and 50 and Eminem and The Game seriously...that find them to be "authentic" and "artists," well, it seems ridiculous to me. They are pornographers of a kind, really. And I'm not knocking pornography either. It has its place. But notice that the g-rap's place has been in our most mainstream media arenas -- big radio, TV, movies, etc. It's pretty astounding, and the Folds cover hammers that home for me.

It also hammers home how entertaining pornography can be, in the hands of an auteur. Heck, even in the hands of a pornographer.

GET THE POOL BOY TO WALK THE DOG: MSNBC's Jeanette Walls quotes Britney Spears, from an ALLURE article, talking candidly about her marriage:

“We hit a little bit of reality, hardcore, after the first three weeks. But we handled it fine, and now things are starting to go really smooth,” Spears told the magazine. “Before we got married we were on tour, and we were just like kids, ordering room service, saying, ‘Let’s go out tonight. Then, all of a sudden, you have this home, you have the kids [Federline’s children Kaleb and Kori], you have to get the diapers, get the dog to the vet. It’s this reality. Like omigod, I have to tell the maid to buy diapers and get the pool boy to walk the dog? Can’t I just make out with Kevin all the time? Being married sucks.”

There's nothing I can type that can top that quote. I'll just let it sit there on its own.

FROM GOD'S MOUTH TO THIS BLOG: Am reading Sharon Salzberg's FAITH right now, and a passage from it made me think of GARDEN STATE, of what Braff may have been getting at with some of it:

We don't know the ultimate unfolding of any story; certainly not enough to decide that what we do has no effect. When we stand before a chasm of futility, it is first of all faith in this larger perspective that enables us to go on.

Further on she quotes T.S. Eliot's similarly resonant, "For us there is only the trying. The rest is not our business."

Affirmative.

BIG HEART: I'm totally rooting for this guy on American Idol.

FINALLY A GOOD MOVIE: Watched GARDEN STATE on the flight back from New York yesterday. Absolutely loved it. I wish, when movies like this come out, that somebody would friggin' force me to watch 'em. I almost missed this! Finally my neighbor kept raving about the soundtrack so much I thought, What the heck. Could almost become a top 10er for me. So, here's your admonition: Go see it!

MOCK SHOCK & OUTRAGE: What? You mean to tell me professional coaches and athletes might be behind ticket scalping? Oh, man. Wow. Next thing you know I'll find out that concert promoters and venue owners are involved, too. I mean, do you want to try and tell me that baseball players are on steroids? That big-time college athletes get money from boosters while coaches look the other way? What's next? Is nothing sacred? Does Las Vegas put a neon countenance on a massive criminal underbelly? Are people still smoking pot? Is there underage drinking in our suburbs? Do people cheat on their taxes? Break the speed limit? Steal cable? Are marketers trying to fool the public? Do our politicians care more about reelection than policy? Are teachers' unions more worried about protecting incompetents than teaching children? Do you mean to tell me network television is more about money than serving the public good? And what of big companies? Are they not more committed to environmentalism than profits? They are, aren't they?

Is it too much to ask that each of does some moral accounting, takes some responsibility for our actions, etc. I mean, c'mon Tice. You knew it was wrong. C'mon, Neuheisel. And c'mon institutions, owners, management, etc. Enough of the wink-wink, nudge-nudge society.

INTEREST ACCOUNTING: A quick and surely incomplete summary of things/people/places that are somewhat *less* interesting to me now than they were just a couple years ago, possibly as a result of my political conversion/awakening/vison quest:

THE NEW YORKER, VANITY FAIR, Salon.com, Slate.com, Howard Stern, Dan Rather, Peter Jennings, the New York Times, Sheryl Crow, Sean Penn, R.E.M., Green Day, Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman (although I still count ISHTAR as one of my fave movies of all time), the Beastie Boys, HARPER'S, MOTHER JONES, Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon (although I still admire her ample bosom), Bill Maher, D.L. Hughley, Michael Moore, ROLLING STONE, Johnny Depp, Janeane Garofalo, NPR, Richard Gere

And a quick and incomplete accounting of things/people/etc. I'm *more* interested in of late:

Tom Wolfe, Bruce Willis, all things military, NASCAR, Travis Tritt, Charles Krauthammer, THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY, MEET THE PRESS, Joe Lieberman, John McCain, Arnold Schwarzenegger

And finally, people/things I never much liked anyway, so it was no great shakes when they did something I found kind of dumb: Bruce Springsteen, Ann Coulter, Ted Kennedy, Hillary Clinton, that Focus on the Family guy and the other Big Religion nuts, Jay Leno

(Seems like I've lost far more than I've gained. Bummer! Hate to trade in the Beastie Boys for Travis Tritt.)

PORTRAIT OF COURAGE: Loved this David Brooks celebration of Paul Wolfowitz.

WHAT HE SAID: Tom Shales's review of FAT ACTRESS pretty much nails it.

BAD TV: For some reason SHOWTIME is now showing up on my satellite network. Maybe it's a free week or something. Anyhow, this little blip allowed me to check in on the debut of Kirstie Alley's FAT ACTRESS last night, as well as an episode of their lesbian drama THE L WORD.

First off, FAT ACTRESS is huge trainwreck mess, much like Alley herself seems. It's not funny-funny, sad-funny, dumb-funny, or any-kind-of-funny. It's sad. It's dumb. It's bad. And not so-bad-it's-good bad, either. Just plain bad. It's so bad it can never be good. In fact, it reminds me of my trip to Branson, MO. Thought it would be funny to go there for a weekend. Turns out it was so bad it was just bad.

John Travolta shows up in it for some reason -- perhaps some kind of Scientologist good deed? -- as does Jeff Zucker. Both are vulgar in awkward ways. Meanwhile Kirstie tries to play her scenes over-the-top but somehow manages to come across pathetic and shameless. After a certain point I felt myself thinking, Good God, she's gross. Seems like this show's premise asks you to feel some sympathy or empathy (somepathy) for the star and her bulkiness, but then the writing and performances render her loathsome. An unmitigated disaster, the likes of which I haven't seen since that MCENROE show got canned.

Come to think of it, maybe it is trainwreck-bad, which almost gives me an excuse to watch it again, to see if it can possibly get worse.

Oh, and then THE L WORD. Let's just say I wondered if there was a way to make a show focused on hot lesbians unwatchable. And the answer was a resounding yes.

BIRDS GONE WILD: What do I have to do to get women to protest my arrival by baring their breasts at me? Prince Charles is a genius.

OUCH: I regularly troll Yahoo's "Most Popular" news stories and news photos. They're usually entertaining and indicative of what's, well, *popular* with and interesting to the masses. You tend to see a lot of near-nudity, cute animals, and physical oddities (really fat people, kids with heads growing out of their heads, etc.). But this photo, below, made me laugh out loud. The fact that what is basically a lowest-common-denominator pictorial "gay joke" tops the Yahoo leaderboards is just hilarious. I'm sure this photographer had no idea what he was capturing when he shot it. Here it is:

BUSY BOY: C.J. and his new gal-pal Sophie collaborate on an untitled beach sculpture.

RUNS IN THE FAMILY: I find my son hilarious. So does he:

SHOT ON VACATION: By popular (one-person) demand, here's a shot of my mom and my youngest son, lounging poolside:

WHERE I BE AT: Hiding out down near Sarasota this week wiht the wife, boys, and grandparents. It's a little cool (in the 60s), but the sky is blue and so is my attitude. Blogging may be light this week.