DEMS AND DUMBER: Despite an incompetent Republican president, pesky religious zealotry, and impending ecological disaster, the Dems still can't find an electable candidate, if you believe most of these early polls. That the nation won't elect a Mormon nutball is heartwarming, although the fact that we're willing to elect other religious nutballs almost cancels that out. (I'm all for God, I just don't think he plays team sports.)
RUDE AWAKENING: I usually spend my "writing" days holed up at one of a half-dozen area Starbucks, my ears cloaked in Bose noise-cancelling headphones set to play "white noise" over and over. Only this morning...I forgot to put the noise on repeat...so when the fuzz track came to an end my iTunes library skipped right down to "White Noise," an over-the-top punk track by Stiff Little Fingers. Felt like somebody had dipped my sack in a coffee pot...zoiks!
NOTE TO SELF: If Rulon Gardner calls and invites you to hang out, say you're busy.
BORING AND BORINGER: I totally agree with Tom Shales...the Oscars were a snoozefest, with the only authentic moment coming when Jennifer Hudson won. The rest was a pageant put on by pageanteers for pageanteers. Me, I'm not so much into pageants. I like small.
I asked my wife, "Why in God's name do I watch this every year when it always bores me to tears?" She had no answer for me.
I'm pretty sure it's cause I like to be part of the conversation the next day at work.
Since I'm not going to work today, I'll share a few of my thoughts here:
I was hoping Al Gore's big announcement might be that he was starting the South Beach Diet.
That Jodie Foster cleans up awful nice.
People that are annoying just to look at: Jada Pinkett Smith, Leo DiCaprio, George Lucas, Kate Winslet, Celine Dion, Maggie Gyllenhall, Melissa Etheridge, Al Gore, Marc Anthony
George Lucas looks like a guy wearing a George Lucas costume.
If Count Chocula ever retires, Marc Anthony's agent should be on the phone immediately.
When did Clint Eastwood turn 90?
Good for Melissa Etheridge. I was rooting for him.
How in blazes did Jennifer Hudson's girls stay in her dress? She must have low nipples.
How can Beyonce look so hot and so cold...at the same time?
For the love of God, no more Celine Dion. Can't we upgrade to Anne Murray or something?
The Oscars are like SNL: You know it's going to suck but you watch anyway.
Will Ferrell's hair -- and Jack Nicholson's lack thereof -- were my twin show highlights.
Mark Wahlberg has jumped the shark.
Tell me I was not the only person in America who was paralyzed by shock when Ben Affleck was introduced as "an Academy-award winning screenwriter."
The hottest babe of this year's Oscars might have been...Helen Mirren. I shit you not. GrandMILF central.
Of all the nominees, Alan Arkin is the guy I'd most like to have coffee with.
Jack Black is really great at playing...Jack Black.
Gwynneth Paltrow is a huge fan and admirer of...Gwynneth Paltrow. By the way, what's a Gwynneth? Pretty sure it's that dangly piece of skin between your...never mind...
Best understated line of the evening: "They're all nude." (DeGeneres referring to the silhouette dancers with whom she had interacted.)
I shed a tear for departed actor: Don Knotts. By far the most affecting of those whose number came up in '06, and I'm not kidding.
GIULIANI/CUBAN '08: It's gotten to the point where I can't help but be a Mark Cuban fan. Laugh at this if you want...but in an age devoid of Susan Sontags and H.L. Menckens and the like...Mark Cuban may be our leading public intellectual. He's certainly our leading public pragmatist.
WRECKED: Let me start with this: Everybody's fine.
Although C.J. was up most of the night having trouble breathing. Seems like a lot of his colds turn to asthma. I slept next to him and administered his inhaler as needed. I was too worried to sleep. I just passed the time by sweating and taking my pulse.
Although Mikey somehow climbed up on the bathroom counter around 6AM this morning, maneuevered across the sink, opened a child-resistant bottle of kids' cough syrup, and drank a fair amount of it. Granted, he did his share of spilling, too. "Mikey, did you drink this?" "Yeah! Mikey like!"
Poison Control said he would be fine, but he might act a little, well, drunk. I wasn't convinced he'd even managed to get much into his mouth. Now, after watching him stagger, giggle, and drool, I'm revising that opinion. "Music, daddy! Mikey dance!" The boy's gooped up on gop. I wish it were funnier, but it's hard to laugh through the guilt and worry. His doctor agreed with Poison Control: no big deal. Apparently it's fairly common.
C.J. seems much better, with a new day. He's tired, and he has no appetite. But he's relatively happy, and he's breathing almost clearly through his coughs.
Eileen, lucky dog, was in Memphis last night. She missed this. Good for her. Daddy was due.
Everyone in the house has been awake since 5AM now. What a debacle. Alas, we made it. It wasn't pretty, but we made it.
RAW: Yesterday it was a four-hour delay at O'Hare, en route to Newark. First one plane broke. Then they couldn't get gas in the second one. Finally we took off, landed, and I had only minutes to make my presentation. Unfortunately, I stood in the cold *downstairs*, while my driver was apparently waiting *upstairs*. I swore at the dispatcher. I'm not proud of it, but I didn't plan it. Sometimes profanity just comes out. We made it with minutes to spare.
I had 150 people waiting for me, and the A/V stuff was was not what it was supposed to be. They said it was X, and it turned out to be Y. Alas, it worked, more or less. I am a pro. Don't mean to brag, but: I made it work. That's my job.
Then my next driver was not where he was supposed to be. I found him, circling the block. I was frozen, but I did not swear. And redemption was just around the corner.
He was canny, and so he found a quick way around an overturned truck. I made it to the airport, running on one Powerbar over the course of a 12-hour day, only to discover: My flight was cancelled. That's alright. It was only the last flight of the day! I'd spend the night at Newark, eating pizza and trying to find new levels of discomfort.
And then: Deus ex machina! The earlier flight was still there. "Sir, run to Gate 14. Run!"
And then home, late, even though I was on the earlier flight. Go figure. One sick kid in my bed. One healthy wife downstairs with the other kid. Not sick, just lonely, the other kid.
And then today the sick one's cold turns into asthma. The wheezing and gasping. And that's just me. God I hate the anxiety I wear when my kids are sick. Like swimming in a sweatshirt and jeans. Heavy. Six breaths. Just relax.
So what? So I make it to dinnertime, albeit after 9PM. So a quick bottle of Chimay Blue, and ordered-in sushi. The FDA may not know it, but the buzz after raw fish is more exilarating than most controlled substances. It's a quick slap of alive, a salty, slimy, brilliant jolt of raw energy, minus the jitters. Feel good, says sushi. Full, and yet still agile. Fueled.
The wife?
Jumped the 8-bird to Memphis, headed to a meeting. Gone 'til tomorrow night. Twenty-four hours of away. Bet she sleeps like a champ tonight. As for the rest of us, I'm counting on two bedmates before dawn, and neither one likely to be good company. The sick one will come first, probably around 2AM, when the albuterol wears off completely. Six more breaths, buddy. You can do it. And then the lonely one will follow. "I want Momma." By morning I'll be wearing the both of 'em, half-dead from lack of sleep, all of us, but totally alive by dint of feeling needed. Connected.
And come tomorrow night I'll be sleeping somewhere outside of Pittsburgh, wishing I was here anyway. So why not be here now. Right. Here. Raw.
SO FAST INDEED: Something changed in our house this morning.
C.J., the nearly five-year-old, has been sick. Fever. Cough. Miserable.
Eileen took Mikey, the two-year-old, to a mom-'n'-tot class this morning, so I stayed home with old Sicky. Nothing like having Dad around to make a sick kid feel better. Right?
"I'm staying with you this morning," I told him, "but I have to do a work phone call at 10."
"Okay."
He didn't seem too heartbroken.
"So I'll need you to play by yourself for about a half hour."
"Fine," he said. "I'll play Wii."
Not very heartbroken at all.
After I finished the call, I took a couple of those little 8 oz. bottles of Coke down to the basement, his lair. I popped the cap on one for each of us, and we shared a father-son, glass-bottle-of-Coke moment. A good time was had by all. I mussed his hair, while he fixated on his favorite Noggin show, "Wow Wow Wubzie."
"Daddy?" he said.
"Yes, C.J."
"Go take a shower. I'm fine."
Have I already crossed the line from favored status to nuisance? My glass-bottle-of-Coke stunt has a shelf-life of five minutes? I had to laugh. And so I did.
Talk about your bittersweet moments.
WHAT HE SAID: My boy Scoop Jackson knows the Chicago Bears will win the Super Bowl, and he's got ten reasons why.
I LOVE REX, BUT FUNNY IS FUNNY: Once again THE ONION nails it. The headline is everything. (Hat tip to my bro' Eric who forwarded it to me.)
EASY TO LOATHE HER: So now Hillary's saying it's Bush's responsibility to have the troops out of Iraq before he leaves office. I was wondering if it was going to be easy for me to resume my profound dislike for her. The answer is: It's a layup. She is the most insincere, opportunistic, full-of-shit pol since...well, since that red-nosed gladhander named Bill that I voted for twice.
Here's where I net out on Bush/Iraq: I'm not sure whether he was deceptive about his reasons for going into Iraq. At the very least he did what many leaders (and *all* politicians) do: He read the facts in the way that most served his needs. The fact remains -- fact! -- that all of the world's major democracies and their instruments of intelligence believed Iraq/Saddam had WMD. So, for me, Bush is off the hook as to the *why* part of going to war. What he's not off the hook for, in my book, is his relentlessly incompetent prosection of the war, not to mention his pigheaded personnel decisions (leaving Rumsfield in there way too long, brushing aside Powell time after time, having Mike Brown at FEMA, putting that attorney-pal chick up for the Supremes, etc.). I want Bush out as much or more than the next guy...because he's not competent. However...
...to call Iraq Bush's problem, to say he has to meet some sort of timetable to tidy things up before the next Administration...suggests the office of the presidency is not one long line of public servants, but is instead a series of isolated fiefdoms, each separate from the next. Bullshit. Hillary voted to support the war. She should continue to support it, even after it's gone to shit. (And by support it, I don't mean she should blindly cheerlead for it. I mean she should consider appropriate strategic actions, in light of reality on the ground. If, God forbid, she were ever Commander-in-Chief, she might have to make hard decisions like this, rather than simply offer monotone-monologues. Our troops are there. Our. We will support them, regardless of Administration. Those are our boys, she should say. We all have a responsibility to them, and to our country, which supersedes party. Dumbass.)
If we need to get out, our timetable for getting out should be driven by a strategy, not an election cycle. That's the right message.
Hillary's an idiot.
SALVE FOR SLEEP: C.J., our four-year-old, has the croup, we think. Scary stuff, with the seal barks and the gasping for air. I had to go get him from his bed tonight, sling him over my shoulder as he gasped and drooled and cried, fireman-carry him upstairs, and then Eileen took him and consoled him and he went back to sleep. We've been through it before. It doesn't seem serious. And so we both seem to console *ourselves* with a basic, mildly comforting thought: "He's not dying."
Funny that the thought "he's not dying" is what passes for comfort at this lifestage. In my teens and twenties, that thought -- with its evil portent -- might have kept me up all night. Now it's the salve I need for sleep.
SIMON COWELL CAN KISS MY ASS! What's most intriguing -- what's *mesmerizing* -- about early-season AMERICAN IDOL is not the nascent talent. It's not the miserably untalented. It's the aggressive delusion with which many of these non-singers confront the judges. What is it about singing and dancing that makes so many of us think we can do it...when in reality most of us flat out suck? Singing and dancing are indeed democratic activities, available to all, born more of expression than expertise. But when you expect to win a talent competition on nothing but raw desire...emphasis on raw...well, you sure do make for great TV.
BTW, my headline is in jest. I think Simon is nothing if not a mercy killer.
NOW THAT'S A PROLOGUE: As many of you know, I'm a big fan of the series mystery, stuff by guys like Connelley, Child, Burke, Hamilton, and Parker. Oh, and Crais. Robert Crais, the guy who writes the "Elvis Cole" series. One of Crais's best characters is this stone killer-guy, Cole's sidekick Joe Pike. Crais's newest, the soon-to-be-released THE WATCHMAN, makes Pike its central character, and the first pre-release excerpt is a doozy. Can't wait. Will hafta buy the ARC on eBay.
WHY TWO-YEAR-OLDS WOULD MAKE BAD SPIES: Here's what I just heard from downstairs:
(bath sounds)
C.J.: "No, Mikey!"
(crash)
C.J. (devastated): "Waaaaaaahhh!"
Eileen (rushing in): "What happened?"
C.J. (through tears): "Mikey hurt me. He threw that at my head!"
Eileen: "Mikey, did you throw that at C.J.'s head?"
Mikey (delighted): "Yeah!"
NO FAIR: I've decided that my occasional bursts of enlightenment are often misinterpreted as ambivalence and/or apathy. Where's the sin in not getting all worked up over everything, I ask you? Sometimes not caring is the right response to calamity, chaos, and (false) pressures. Sometimes "so what" is the only honest response to somebody else's imperative.
Or maybe I'm just a jerk.
SOME IMPENETRABLE RANT ABOUT MULTICULTURALISM AND MUSIC: Over the years I've been drawn to various musical movements -- the punk movement of the mid- to late-'70s, the intellectual cardigan and spectacle set of the Smiths and their ilk, and the pastiche of early rap and hip-hop as expressed by the lineage of Grandmaster Flash to NWA to De La Soul.
It meant a lot of looks for me: First it was skateboards and short hair. Then Billy Bibbitt long-hair-on-top with shaved sides. Then baggy trousers and hoodies. I did my best.
What's entertaining of late is how these moments have all come together, how a hip-hopper like Lupe Fiasco can come out with a song like "Kick, Push" (which I discovered through Camel reader Paul), how Kanye can proximately ape the nerded-out intellectualism of shoegazers like Morrisey and new wavers like Thompson Twins, how Eminem is nothing if not the son of the Sex Pistols, a bleached-out surf punk spittin' rhymes from inside an industrial wasteland and across a cultural chasm. All of a sudden LRG is making clothes that combine all three elements into a distinctive "streetstyle" look, not neutered nor crazy-quilted, but a single unified look that says creativity and rebellion and eco-organic insouciance. It's as if the "For Us By Us" of FUBU got hip and inclusive, pan-racial, pan-socioeconomic, as if the United Colors of Bennetton spontaneously generated all around us.
I was originally just gonna post about how much I love that "Push, Kick" song, and now here I am off on some kind of writerly bullshit. Whatever. Thanks, Paul! Good song, even if I'm not sure what the difference is between a kick and a push when skateboarding...
RHYMES WITH PUKE: Now Duke says the unjustly accused lacrosse players -- the two that haven't graduated yet -- can come back to school. How big of Duke. I'm curious: Is it Duke's policy to suspend and essentially presume guilt in all criminal cases involving students?
Granted, Duke made a big mistake when they rejected my early decision application and waitlisted yours truly way back in 1984. But now they've *really* screwed up. What a total crock this case has been since day one.
PROMISES, PROMISES: For quite a few years now -- more than a decade, probably less than two -- I've been sharing New Year's resolutions with a college pal. It's pretty fun. We swap 'em right after the New Year, then we cajole and tease each other about it a bit during the year. Just a bit. No biggie. Just a fun little tradition. Anyway, here's what I just emailed him for this year:
Develop some form of ongoing spiritual practice; identify some form of spiritual community Work on some form of routine in my life, spiritual/exercise/family etc.; rituals and routines; I’m doing the individual things, but I want to put some ritual to it, to perhaps make it more effortless Finish novel by my birthday, 5/11 Do a better job with birthdays, holidays, anniversaries, and other special things; remembering them, honoring them, getting special gifts, etc. Try to do at least one special, one-on-one thing with each of my sons each week Cut way down on french fries and pastries Get weight below 190 (currently 205) Exercise at least three times/week
So...what are your resolutions?
