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.