All The News That’s Fixed To Print

I have spent more time on news websites the past four weeks than I have in the past year. I have published two or three blogs that are observations about politics because my opinions are my own and like religion and child rearing, nobody wants to hear your opinion. There are another nine that will probably never see the light of day because like how all good therapy should work, once it’s out of my system, I am back about my business.

This I had to show to someone.

Tony Lipari IMed me this morning and asked, “Did Obama change his tax plan?”

ME: Not that I am aware of. I doubt it.

TONY: My cousin just told me he changed it from $200 thousand to $100 thousand.

ME: That’s insane. Where did he hear that?

TONY: In a McCain speech.

ME: Okay. His tax plan is a proposal. They both are. It would be insane to change it to that number four days before an election when you don’t even know it’s going to pass.

TONY: That’s what I said.

ME: Hold on. Let me check.

I go to FoxNews.com.

ME: Okay. FoxNews.com has ten headlines. Seven of them are criticizing Obama. None of them mention a tax plan change. If anybody would jump on that story, they would have it.

TONY: Okay.

After lunch I have to check and see what I missed and on FoxNews I find this:

How Low Can ‘Middle’ Go?

So I click and read the article that essentially says Gov Bill Richardson (D-NM) quoted the Obama tax plan in a radio interview and said $120k. Last week Joe Biden quoted it as $150k. By the time it got to Tony’s cousin, it was $100k. It’ll be $75k by the end of Saturday. By Tuesday there will be an email Obama wants your first born son.

Okay, Biden gets no pass because he’s a member of the Obama camp but also has a reputation for saying goofy things. I am just going to write them both off as flubs. The same as I did during the debate when Sarah Palin referred to Biden as “Joe O’Biden.” I don’t think she meant to refer to him as if he were some kind of Irish-Indonesian from Scranton. Word flub. I once answered a telephone at work, “Thank you for calling God.” There is a lot that could be read into it and you’d be wasting your time.

Richardson, on the other hand, shares a political party. He’s not a spokesman. He’s just a dude in an interview.

Okay, here is the part of the article that kills me. The third paragraph is this line:

Click here to listen to Richardson talk about Obama’s tax plan.

If you click the link it send you to a YouTube twelve second clip with no video (well it is radio) and text stating “Bill Richardson: $120,000 And Under Now Get A Tax Cut.”

YouTube? Really? I guess they couldn’t find a source on Wikipedia that was thorough enough for them. Who the fuck cites YouTube as source?

Thank you, Squirrel On Waterskiis. I am Peter Pan Guy, goodnight and have a pleasant tomorrow.

I do it all the time but I’m a smartass with an internet connection. I’m not a news organization and I sure as hell don’t have the words “Fair & Balanced” on this site. They couldn’t call the radio station and have someone email them a clip and post on their own site with a picture of Richardson? Better yet, call Richardson for verification that’s what he meant or even better, call the Obama camp and verify it. I just went to their site and there is the entire plan. Looks the same as it did three weeks ago when I read it. I watched a clip where someone suggested something asinine and the reporter ended the piece with the words, “One last time if you want to come on from that ledge,” and she declined. That dude was just making sure he heard her right and that she didn’t say something stupid my accident.

No, sometimes people mean to say stupid things.

Campaign Wishes And Election Night Dreams

In 1992 I was working at Spec’s Music & Movies, a music/video rental store.  We sold cassettes if that puts the time into perspective.  We participated in Rock The Vote, a campaign MTV designed to motivate youth to register and vote.  This is when MTV was Music Television and not Miscellaneous Television.  This was before the much more threatening Vote Or Die campaign on 2004, and for the record, I am pretty sure I can take P Diddy out if he tried to kill me on November 4 if he caught me in Best Buy instead of a voting booth.

That year I must have registered hundreds of people.  Hopefully some of them voted.  Like a lot of elections, I felt they were talking to me.  Bill Clinton came on MTV and did a townhall meeting when incumbent George Bush declined.  He appeared in The Arsenio Hall Show, something unheard of for a political candidate and reached another group of people who thought they’d been forgotten.  Today, you can’t campaign without making the rounds on Letterman, Saturday Night Live or The View.

I am what Natalie calls and Armchair Activist.  Put it on a ballot and I’ll vote for it, but understand, I have a damn comfortable couch.  I won’t put stickers on my car or signs in my lawn.  My politics are my business.  My father taught me years ago you don’t advertise for people who don’t pay you and that goes for my presidential pick or Nike.  I always feel a little bad for those people with the faded Gore ‘00 sticker thinking nature has had its way with it (and the cosmos with the driver).

Natalie is literally a card carrying activist.  There were very few caveats in our relationship but somewhere in the beginning she told me about her activism and if that would be a problem.  I asked, “Is this something you’re expecting me to do?”

“No,” she said.

“You aren’t going to try and overthrow the government, are you?”

“No,” she said.

“We’re good, then.”

She decided she wanted to volunteer for the Barack Obama campaign.  She found the place hidden in a labyrinthine industrial area of town and they sent her canvassing, knocking on doors encouraging people to early vote.  So they sent her to an area she’d never been to, in a city she’s only lived in for four months to knock on strangers doors… alone.

The brave.

She came home with fine. People had been mostly nice to her.  She asked to hang an Obama bumper sticker in the front window and since she lives here now, I obliged.  We hung it next to my John McCain sticker.

Two weeks later she had some free time and told me she was going back.  She asked me to come.  She tried to bribe with the promise of delicious tacos.  I went because I know it meant a lot to her and because as much as I like to think it doesn’t matter, I know every little bit counts.  Also, if they sent her out again, I didn’t want her to be alone.

So Saturday after my weekly visit to the comic book store we went to the campaign headquarters.  It’s a very unassuming building three minutes from anything remotely interesting.  The interior looks like it was thrown together with a minimum of money.  Stacks of campaign materials collect in the corners of the rooms.  A seven hour old box of Dunkin Donuts is visible in the kitchen and coffee never stops brewing.  We introduce ourselves and are given a list of names and taken to the back of the office and seated at a folding table with two phones.  We’re given a script of what to say.  I decide to dismiss it without reading it.

I decide to watch Natalie do two before I start.

I don’t know where the lists come from but they weren’t all Democrats or Republicans.  I am glad we weren’t asked to talk politics to anyone.  I overheard a woman ask Natalie her party and she told her.  We were only requested to let people know Vice Presidential Joe Biden will be in Ocala on Tuesday October 28 and we’d like them to attend and make them aware early voting will be available until November 1.  You mostly leave messages.  Caller ID has probably made the job a lot easier.  Nobody was nasty to me.  Most people were cordial.  One woman listened to my thirty second spiel and politely said, “that’s not for me,” and I thanked her.  Natalie had one person hang up on her when she told her where she was calling from.

Truth be told, endorsing a candidate is like a job reference and something I don’t give out very often.  Bill Clinton embarrassed me.  I don’t think he did anything as President I have serious issues and frankly, I don’t give a damn about the Monica Lewinsky incident but it never should have happened and although he did what every cheating husband on Earth has ever done (lied), it was a black eye on the office and the party.  Is it any different than what men from the Kremlin to the Krispy Kreme have done to their women?  No.  But my father used to tell me, “I don’t care what they do, I’m not their father.  I’m yours.”  And Bill was the guy I voted for.

In all, we called over a hundred people and we didn’t say anything about our candidates or anyone else’s.  We just encouraged them to vote.

Then we went and got tacos.

Note To Sarah Palin: Mayberry, The “Real America” Votes Democrat

more about “Opie Cunningham Lives“, posted with vodpod

Past Times At Colonial High

I never went to my high school reunion.  High school wasn’t fond memories of my misspent youth and friends I wouldn’t ever forget.  They were years of awkwardness, neurosis and inadequacy culminating into the following two decades trying to unravel what was done in those four.  I don’t foster the desire to see what happened to those people.  I am sure I wouldn’t recognize most of them (and in truth, I have been trying to forget).

Natalie and I are opposites in so many ways.  She doesn’t know this but I live vicariously through her.  Her intelligence, confidence and ethics.  Natalie graduated Salutatorian which she attributes on a ‘B’ that appeared one quarter and the damning trickery of Chemistry II in general.   I am sure she has a box somewhere of high school pictures she treasures.  Her best friends were the ones from the Gifted classes she took.  For months leading up to the reunion she complained about the lack of preparation and threatened she was going to take it over and plan the damn thing herself.  These threats come often.  She’s threatened to fix health care and the adoption system many times also.  I just agree and keep playing Xbox.

The events planned took place over three days.  Friday night was a tour of the school followed by attending the football game that evening.  The kick in the ass here is the school has, to my understanding, been demolished and rebuilt.  The brick Natalie bought with her name in it?  Gone.  Her locker?  Gone.  I think about John Cusack in Grosse Point Blank going to his childhood home and finding it’s become a convenience store.  In my head, I can hear the Violent Femmes’ “Blister In The Sun.”  I never understood high school football (or college or pro football for that matter).  I worked with a woman who told me she had trouble rooting for her cheerleader daughter’s school when they played her alma mater.  Really?  That was like, thirty years ago.  It’s a bunch of seventeen year olds gawky boys.  You have shoes older than that.  You might want to let that go.

Natalie elected to skip those events and I was grateful.  I have been to one high school football game in my life when because the planets aligned and in some freak series of events I dated Tamsin Grant who was a cheerleader and came to support her.  Instead we showed up for the Saturday events which included a lunch at Barney’s Steakhouse on Colonial and mixer somewhere downtown.

I feel I have secret information when I am around people significantly younger than I.  Like they’re watching a movie for the first time and I know exactly who Keyser Soze is.  It’s that first ten years filled with exciting things like college and marriage.  It’s the next ten years realizing nobody pays you for your degree in Elizabethan poetry and if your marriage has been reduced to feeding and bathing three kids, laundry and going to bed at 10:00p after So You Think You Can Dance?

At the front they had a table with the pictures of the six students who’d died since graduation.  Another table was the enlisted students and where they were serving.  Natalie knew some of them.  The circumstances of their deaths were in question.  I have been here before and it’s those initial deaths that really put your life into perspective and make you wonder what you’ve done with your decade.  I once saw Sylvester Stallone deliver a nugget of wisdom in an interview that you do little your first twenty-five years and most people are retired for the last twenty five which leave a very small two or three decades in between to accomplish whatever you have to get done.

And I’m a procrastinator.

A girl approached Natalie and immediately began to gush over her and when I was introduced, she told me how lucky I was.

Hello, my name is Jim, and I am the choir.  Nice to meet you.

She began to apologize to Natalie for how she treated her.  Borderlining on tears, she told me Nat was a genuine person who deserved better.  She also looked like she used both her drink coupons and maybe some she found abandoned on the table.  Her life probably hadn’t gone according to plan.  Most of ours don’t otherwise I would have moved to California in 1989, directed the last three Star Wars films and be married to Winona Ryder.  She graduated college and was teaching.  Lost her job and was now a cashier at Publix living with her parents and was quick to point out her long time boyfriend who wouldn’t marry her.  Her words, not mine.  The entire confession left me a little uncomfortable so I slowly turned and abandoned Natalie to listen to her friends reminisce about people I don’t know.

After lunch, people made their way to the tables.  Some people who never talked to us and none of us knew, took pictures of every single table and I imagine years from now they’ll look at them and wonder who the hell we are.

That evening was a mixer at the Wall Street Cantina, a bar with a pirate theme… I love irony.  Natalie’s strategy is given the state of the economy, there are probably people who weren’t willing to pay the money for the lunch but would show for the free mixer.  There were a few people she hoped to see.  Some people who made conversation with her now that she recognized but never spoke to in high school.  I wonder in ten years when they are thirty-eight will there be this much unabashed cleavage and tight pants?  After an hour, we left for dinner realizing we’re too old dark bars and loud music.

Footnote: Natalie will be quick to point out that I am too old for dark bars and loud music… keep in mind this is the one who falls asleep every night at 9:00p if left to her own devices.

Sunday there was a family picnic.  Anticipating fields of twentysomethings playing “My Kid’s Better Than Your Kid,” we skipped this.  In retrospect, I should have found a white precocious six year old that won’t grow and tell people he was the son of our maid who died and we adopted him.  Hilarity ensues.  It’s Natalie that prevents me from doing such things as changing my occupation every time we met someone new.

What do I do?

I work for the Gallup Poll.  It’s a good gig.  We only work six months every four years.

I’m independently wealthy.  You know that little plastic table in pizza boxes that keeps the cheese from sticking?  I invented that.

I’m a photographer.  That picture of Britney Spears with her junk hanging out… that was me.

I make up titles for adult films.  Have you seen Strokedown Palace with Claire Dames?

Instead, Natalie and her friends had arranged a lunch.  This was the real reason we were here.  It was just her friends.  The people she’d spent the most time with.  Tara and Sean married each other and are expecting their first kid.  She teaches elementary school.  He’s an engineer for NASA.  Having someone throw down a business card with the NASA logo is very, very cool especially since all boys want to be either astronauts or superheroes when they grow up.  Debbie is still in college.  Heather manages a Ben & Jerrys and going on nine years of marriage.  My apologies to Maggie but I never heard what she does but in my defense she was sitting on the far end of the table and appeared as a series of eye expressions and hand gestures.

We sat there, ate and talked for three hours and when we were asked to leave, we stood outside for another hour.

It’s here that I realized high school reunions are about maybe ten people.  The ten people that are important to you.  The others are curiosities and people will exchange contact information and may even use it but you can’t go forward with one foot firmly planted in history.  Natalie told me she was so glad she had something going on in her life and that the best parts were just now happening, not wasted on her youth.

You can go home again.  It’s a nice place to visit…

 

Class Of 1998

 

“Now I think I’m going down to the well tonight and I’m going to drink till I get my fill. 
And I hope when I get old I don’t sit around thinking about it but I probably will. 
Yeah, just sitting back trying to recapture a little of the glory of, well time slips away 
and leaves you with nothing mister but boring stories of glory days.”

“Glory Days”
Bruce Springsteen
Born In The USA (1984)

 

Powell To The People

My father was born in Charlottesville VA in 1925.  One of four sons they lived by meager means.  He joined the Army during the Second World War not to defend his country, but to defend what was his.  He told me growing up, “This country, this world, will give you few things.  Even the things you earn and deserve will often be withheld from you.  As an African-American born in the mid-twenties, this was more true.  Patriotism is fine but understand I don’t fight for my neighbors or other Americans.  They have husbands and sons that can do that for them.  I fight for that small piece of land with my name on it and the piece with my mother’s name on it.”  He would tell me if you watch your history, the government will give you nothing.  It has to be earned.  They seldom do things out of the goodness of their hearts.  They do things because of bus boycotts and protests.  They do things because of pressure.  They fight Civil Wars because Europe tells them they are barbarians for the antiquated practice of slavery.  The nineteenth century equivalent of, “Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall.”  Most often, you will find obstacles to prevent your betterment and the successes you have will be minimized.  In the day, one drop of black blood would be enough to get you hung, today you can have 50% black blood and someone will be quit to point out that Tiger Woods and Halle Berry aren’t “really black” therefore dismissing their Masters Tournament and Best Actress wins.  Or expect to be told you have the job you have because they had to hire you, never mind you are qualified.  What they are really saying is without them you couldn’t have what you have and you owe them.  Remember, everything you don’t have is because they designed a system to withhold it from you in the first place.

When Michelle Obama said, “For the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country because it feels like hope is finally making a comeback,” I knew what she meant.

After WWII, my father did a tour in Korea.  He eventually retired a Master Sergeant having served as twenty four years as a Drill Instructor.  My father thought Full Metal Jacket was a comedy and made him long for the “good ole days” of a “Man’s Army.”  This didn’t mean an Army without women… it meant an army where you could punch a soldier in the gut and not get reprimanded.  He used to tell me stories of Basic Training where he would make soldiers dig six foot ditches, toss a cigarette butt in it and have them bury it and then have another team dig it out.

That’s just how they did things then.

My father admired Colin Powell.  Like many black people, we take the accomplishments of members of our race as our own whether that be Chairman Of The Joint Chiefs Of Staff or embarrassment of the guy who punches a fourteen year old girl in the face in front of his children in a McDonald’s for unintentionally cutting in line.  Colin Powell had a simple background and used his means to become the most powerful black man in the history of America as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs (under Reagan) and Secretary of State (under Bush 43).  It’s been argued Powell, was America’s most successful black politician without having ever sought an elected office and even after his participation in the Iraq War, 75% Americans still viewed him favorably.

My father liked Colin Powell because when he spoke, it always seemed heartfelt.  He didn’t seem to tell you what you wanted to hear and there is something to be said for making people eat their vegetables and not placating their egos.  Powell didn’t seem to live in a world of Us vs Them and instead he lives where we all should… in a world of We.

Powell has long been the considered the most rational voice of the Bush Administration.  I remember when Iraq started and I was confused.  Everything they’d told us was about Afghanistan.  I got a bad taste in my mouth and told my friend Ray Pfriender, I didn’t understand what Iraq did.  He told me there were Weapons of Mass Destruction and I remember watching the Powell in front of the UN showing us the satellite photos and I thought, “If Colin says they’re there…”

Personally, I don’t think there were ever WMDs.  Ray will tell you the UN jerked around so long they had time to move them into Syria.  To me, it seems if you have WMDs on satellite then it should be someone’s job to watch that screen and know where they are at all times and not let someone slip them away in the dead of night.  They don’t record these feeds?  The other scenario is your intel(ligence) is completely wrong and we invaded a country who has never killed or threatened an American, overthrown its leader, killed thousands of Americans as well as Iraqis and thrown it into chaos because Saddam Hussein is a dick.  Either scenario reeks of incompetence.

Powell has gone on record as saying the decision to invade Iraq was made without his consultation.  You have to question the wisdom of invading a country when Colin Powell is in the next room and you neglect to run that past him.  I often wonder if he knew the data he showed the UN was inaccurate.  If they told him they’re 90% sure there were WMDs and he placed his bet and everybody knows the house always wins.

This past Sunday I watched Meet The Press with Tom Brokaw and when Powell prefaced his Presidential endorsement, I sat there with Natalie and her father Bruce, and listened to Colin Powell’s America.

It looks a lot like mine.

I believe there is a little heartbreak in his voice and I can hear McCain (as well as a few million Republicans nationwide thinking, “Et tu, Brute?”  I think Powell is a man betrayed by his party and it hurts him.  The same way McCain has this look of regret knowing the woman’s at his rally accusing Obama of being an Arab would be everywhere within the hour.  A look that he knows once you’ve riled up the villagers and they’ve gotten their shotguns, pitchforks and lit their torches… someone is going to pay.  That’s what lynch mobs do.

I won’t synopsize Powell’s comments because I won’t do them justice.  I’ll just say Natalie cried, I welled up and had he probably bought me at least three days of being in a good mood about politics and the state of my country. 

There will be people that will discredit this.  The FoxNews.com forums were littered with it.  It’s a black man siding with another black man… what did you expect?  This is because apparently white people have the skill and integrity to be open-minded and fair so when they vote for the white guy, it isn’t about race, it’s because he’s the better candidate.

My father was right.  As usual.

PS – I even felt the need to break out my Colin Powell GI Joe Jessica bought for me years ago for Christmas.

 

A Real America Hero

Kobayashi Maru & The Tao Of William Shatner

As always, hyperlinks are in colors.

Although the subject changes, the joke goes something like this:

How many Star Trek fans does it take to screw in a light bulb?  Two hundred.  One to change the bulb and one hundred and ninety nine to bitch about how much better the old bulb was.

Months ago I got into an argument at the comic store about Star Trek.  If you have never seen a nerd fight over something amazingly insignificant, find your nearest comic book store and wait twenty minutes.  TJ, is a hulking man often wearing shorts and a KISS t-shirt.  He owns a mobile car detailing business and plays guitar in a band.  He will tell you Gene Simmons is a God.

The conversation went from the film Cloverfield (2008) to upcoming reboot of Star Trek (in theatres May 7, 2009), both which involve director/producer JJ Abrams.  TJ was panicked.

TJ: He’s not going to do that shakycam shit with my Star Trek, is he?

JIM: No.  He didn’t direct Cloverfield.  He just produced it.

TJ: Well, I don’t know that.  They should just leave Star Trek alone.  It’s fine the way it is.

JIM: Actually, it’s been a mess for decades.

TJ will also argue that he doesn’t know anyone that doesn’t like the last three Star Wars movies and I will argue you could put a lightsaber fight in the Hannah Montana movie and Star Wars nerds will drink the Kool-Aid and tell you it’s fantastic.  Denial is a powerful thing.

TJ: It doesn’t matter.  It’s going to suck.  He’s messing with a powerful thing and there is a huge Star Trek fanbase that will just get pissed no matter what.  I wish they would just leave it alone.

For those who are Trek challenged, Star Trek was a television series that debuted in 1966 and in the three short years it aired was threatened with cancellation several times.  It was kept on the air because of ardent fans and letter writing campaigns, the first of their kind in days before the internet when you actually had to do something.

Keep in mind, these people probably never wrote their congressman or their grandmothers but felt the need write NBC to save Star Trek.

Cancellation.  Death comes for everyone.  The show is quickly revived as a Saturday morning cartoon and then a series of six movies, four spinoff series, four more movies, hundreds or books, comics, toys and games and forty two years later, here we are.

For the better part of two decades the franchise has become stale.  Paramount decided never to let a cash cow die and are reviving Star Trek next summer is a preboot (prequel/remake/reboot) of the original series with new actors.

Sacrilege.

For many, it’s hard to imagine Star Trek someone else in the daddy chair being called Kirk.  For those who don’t care, try to imagine it with someone current you like.  Peter Parker done by Daniel Radcliffe or Indiana Jones via Hugh Jackman.  That sense of uncomfort you feel in your spine is the same as a few million Trekkies setting their phasers for “kill.”

It always irks me when someone says, “you can’t remake that,” or “Robert Downey Jr is the only Iron Man.”  I live with the knowledge that it’s very possible when George Lucas is dead and buried and I am in my sixties someone will look at a sixty year old film called Star Wars and say, “we should remake this.”

And I would be all for it.

I don’t think there are any sacred cows.  Wizard of Oz was made five times before the definitive version in 1939.  Ben Hur (1959), Ten Commandments (1956), The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956)… all remakes and we were better off for it.  Movies aren’t bad because they’re remakes… they’re bad because they’re bad.  There will be good ones (King Kong (1933)) and bad ones (King Kong (1976)) and ones people refuse to admit are good because you dared remake a classic (King Kong (2005)).

The point here the character of Captain James T Kirk and the Starship Enterprise is bigger than William Shatner the same way Robin Hood is bigger than Errol Flynn or Sherlock Holmes is bigger than Basil Rathbone.  I apply the same logic to Superman, Batman and Indiana Jones.  Keep in mind we went through three Supermen to get to Christopher Reeve and six Batmen to get to Christian Bale.  There were two Battlestar Galactica series before the current one (and people threw a fit over a female Starbuck).  To think one actor steps in a role (and is William Shatner, no less) and suddenly he’s the definitive Jim Kirk is ridiculous.

With that, I leave you with the first images of the new Star Trek film.  I’ll judge it when I see it but it looks like Star Trek to me.  Actually, I’m surprised at how much it looks like Star Trek.

PS – And those who are wondering about the title, the Kobayashi Maru is a simulator at Starfleet Academy that is (unknown to the students,) unwinable.  It’s purpose is to judge how a Captain reacts in a losing situation.  The only person who has ever beaten it is Kirk because he doesn’t believe in unwinable situations and rigged the simulator to put the odds in his favor.  JJ Abrams will have his own Kobayashi Maru next summer.

He… The People, To Form A More Perfect Government

Colored text are hyperlinks… go ahead, click ‘em.

So I am watching some 24 hour news network this weekend and they had a piece about African-American voters supporting John McCain.  They have three men, two middle-aged men and a man in his very early twenties voting in his first election.  They all stated their reasons for voting for John McCain whether that be the economy, defense or his moral tenants.  Fine, I’m with you.  Everybody’s priorities are different.  That’s your business and you’re all grown men able to know what’s best for you.

Now I don’t think black voting against Obama is odd.  You wouldn’t judge a white person immediately as a Democrat or a Republican but it works a little different with blacks.  My friend Kendra was a coordinator for Jeb Bush and tried to sell me on his platform and I told her she should give me her boss’ number so I could call him so he knew how hard she was working trying to get black people to vote Republican… after all, I watch the Republican National Convention and there are usually more of us on the stage than there are in the audience.  Natalie and I actually made a drinking game out of it last month and took a shot every time they showed a brown person in the audience.  About thirty minutes in we ruled Bridget McCain doesn’t count or we’re gonna be immobile when the confetti drops.

 

One of them made an excellent point which was to vote for Barack Obama because he’s black is in contradiction to what we’ve been taught by Martin Luther King, Jr which is to judge by the content of your character, not the color of your skin (see Palin Drones, an article I wrote about same thing).  So they get to the end of the piece and they’re asked if there is any chance you’re going to get in there, close the curtain and vote for Barack Obama.  Two of them immediately said no and the final dude says, “No, and I get to vote twice this year.”

My orange soda stopped at my lips and I stopped chewing my ham sandwich.  What you talkin’ ’bout, Wllis?

“I am an Elector so I get to vote personally and for the Electoral College.  I’ll be voting for John McCain twice.”

I just about shat myself.  Did he actually say that?  I mean what he does with his own vote is his business but the elector vote… that’s the vote for the people.  What the hell is he doing?  I don’t care if he was voting for Barack Obama.  I don’t care if he was voting for a President Tom Beck / VP Dave Kovic ticket.  You could clone Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson and I would still say it was wrong.  It’s an abuse of power.  It exposes a flaw in the system and worse, sheer dismissal of the opinions of everyone in that state.

This is what’s known as a Faithless Elector and it’s illegal in 24 states (although no one has ever been charged with it).  There is a link there and it lists all the Faithless Electors and their reasons.  It’s amazing how many of the dorks can’t read a ballot and are voting for people from opposing parties.  My personal favorite is Barbara Lett-Simmons who in 2000 refused to vote in protest of Washington DC’s lack of statehood.

I didn’t vote for George W Bush in 2000 but I am a grown man, I know the rules.  When people went nuts and got angry, I never did.  I’m not a crybaby.  I have never said he wasn’t my President because I live here, he is.  It pisses me off when people try to make light of his office and that he “stole” an election because he lost the popular vote and still won the Electoral College, the third time in history that’s happened.  But I know the rules and them’s the rules.  I won’t take my ball and go home.  I’ll stay and play.  Had the reverse happened, I wouldn’t have expected Al Gore to step down from being the most powerful man on the planet.

I’m sorry, George, you first.  Clearly the people want you.  My bad.

George W Bush would have always had my respect if the first thing he did when he took office was announce that in this modern day and age these things shouldn’t happen.  That it’s a slight at the democracy we hold so dear to have a country led by someone they didn’t choose.  That the fates of three hundred million Americans are really in the hands of five hundred and thirty eight people.  And at that moment announce he was dismantling the Electoral College.

Nobody would have ever done that but it would have been nice.

Instead I get this douche on CNN who announces to the America, that no matter what you want, I’m doing what I want… fuck you.

I’m tired of people telling me what’s best for me.

Have My Cake And Eat It Too…

…or Reason #219 I have marry this girl.

As always, bold, colored text are hyperlinks.

So Natalie and I are winding down Sunday and she tells me she’s been thinking about Groom’s Cakes and this would be a good idea.

JIM: What’s a Groom’s Cake?

NATALIE: It’s a cake for the Groom.

I gathered that.  She says this with a sense of pride expecting me to be excited.

JIM: I mean, what’s it for?

NATALIE: So you have your own cake.  You’ve never heard of a Groom’s Cake?

No.  I must have missed that issue of American Groom Monthly that I get OH YEAH THEY DON’T MAKE WEDDING MAGAZINES FOR DUDES.

JIM: Are you getting your own cake?

That previous sentence goes back to my upbringing where my father taught us if you don’t see anyone else doing it; you probably should be, either.

I am reminded of an incident when my good friend of twenty years and upcoming groomsman, Dusty Rhodes, was having a house built and insisted he have his own room (this was before Man Cave was a commonly used expression on HGTV).  He learned a quick lesson when you move in with a woman that everything you owned pre-them is childish and stupid.  Your comic books.  Your action figures.  Your recliner that you found on the corner on Trash Tuesday that matches nothing in your house.

JENNIFER: Am I getting my own room?”

DUSTY: No.  You’re getting the rest of the house.

He never did get that room and last time I was over he wanted to show me something on his PC.  His PC was in the garage on a workbench next to power drills and fertilizer.  He sat on a small barstool and played videogames and listened to music in the Florida summer.  At least his he was allowed to hang his Evil Dead poster there.

NATALIE: Yes, you can have wedding cake but this cake is for you to do what you want to.

JIM: What would I want to do with a cake?

NATALIE: I don’t know.  Maybe get a cake shaped in a Superman ‘S.’

JIM: (Appalled) Well, that’s just stupid.

 

For a second I wonder if she thinks I am ten.

NATALIE: I bet we can have someone make a cake shaped like an Xbox.

This is where I stop her.  Have you ever seen those country dudes that get married and they have the shoestring bolo ties and their cowboy boots and hats on.  I always think, seriously, it’s just one day.  I know you wear that stuff all year round but you think you can just set it aside for one day and put the tux and a pair of shoes on?  I’m not James Bond.  I don’t wear a tux and fancy shoes every day.  We’re all making sacrifices here.

There is a part of this that feels like when a mom gives their kid something to do that makes them feel important.  Natalie tells me stories of her parents letting her order Shirley Temples and how adult it made her feel.  My father used to ask me to grab the end of the couch when he rearranged the furniture and I felt like I was helping but in reality, I was six.

That’s what this cake is.  Natalie trying to involve in me a process I have little involvement with.  Not that I have been pushed out of the process like my brother was when the sentence, “we’re spending how much on flowers?” came out.   More because she knows what she wants.  Often she’ll ask me what I think and then throw another option up and seldom have I disagreed.  The colors are black and white… the colors are red and white… unless you expect me to ask my fellas to wear a pastel, we’re fine either way.  There are about three things I have asked to have happen at this wedding… outside of that, my goal is to make sure she gets what she wants.

She doesn’t want a Superman cake.  She might not care, but I do.  I know there are some women who probably go through their fiancé’s guest list with a red Sharpie and an “I don’t want to see any of his dumb friends on my big day” attitude.

Not Natalie.  Natalie offered me a cake.

Palin Drones

As always, colored text are hyperlinks to cool stuff.

Last night I went to my friend Tina’s to install a wireless router.

Tina is the happily married mother of two children.  Having worked with her for nine years, I envied her relationship with her spouse.  The way she consistently refers to him as “babe” is something I would adopt (and as Natalie can attest, I have).  She comes from a white middle-class family of six siblings (it might be seven, anything over three to me is a lot).  Her sister Becky, who is ridiculously pretty, and a mother of five (and before I start getting letters, when most people think “mother of five” you don’t think “hottie,” I usually think “tired”).  Becky has a special needs daughter who is nothing short of remarkable.  Tina’s husband is a (very) small business owner (he may be his only employee) and a hell of a nice guy.  They are card carrying Christians and by that I mean she’s very conscious of what her children are exposed to, they attend service every Sunday and while I am programming their router I can hear their father leading them in prayer before they eat their Wendy’s cheeseburgers.  And although she an dher siblings disagree at times, you can tell there is love there.  Regardless of your beliefs, I imagine it’s hard to vilify someone you’ve known since you were born who is sitting across the Thanksgiving Day table.

As I was walking into her home I noticed she has a “Sarah!” sticker on the back window of her SUV centered neatly between stickers of her children’s sports activities.  It isn’t surprising especially when you read that previous paragraph.  I believe people’s political affiliations are like their religions or parenting skills.  I may ask questions to understand how you got the choices you’ve made but I won’t criticize you for them.  What struck me as odd, and it isn’t the first time I have seen that sticker, is they are promoting a Vice-Presidential candidate.

The first election I remember was 1980.  John Anderson, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan.  I mention Anderson because I remember being puzzled that there were three guys at a debate.  My first election was 1992.  My friend Jessica (Sexson) Zins’ father and I would talk politics and he being much older and worldly than I (and a member of Mensa) and I was… well I was twenty and way, way out of my league.  In my naïveté, I remember saying something about how much I respected Al Gore and he told me, “nobody votes for the Vice-President.”  After last night I started thinking; I don’t remember ever seeing advertising with “Gore!” or “Lieberman!” on it.  I still don’t see any “Biden!” stickers and even Republicans can admit a “Quayle!” or “Cheney!” sticker would probably have done more harm than good.

So on the way to work I called Jessica (which I usually do because she’s now an Indiana stay-at-home mother of three and the twenty minutes between 8:00a and 8:20a when she’s available without kids demanding her attention).  I asked, “Does the do-it-all mom, Christian, folksy, Everyday Joe image of Sarah Palin appeal to you?”  With little hesitation, she said, “Yes.”  She explained that she seems smart like someone she could sit down and have a conversation with.  She felt she possessed common sense and the qualities necessary to represent her.

The she asked me, “Do you not like her?”

And I explained she annoys the shit out of me.  It annoys me that the Republican Party has distracted people from their actual candidate and people have bought it, often because she’s likable.  That folksy, down home, “I’m not like those city folk” bullshit wears thin on me real quick.  I hate it when James Carville does it (although I laugh every time because he’s like some genius hillbilly Lex Luthor).  I remember listening to Real Radio 104.1 and Jim Phillips asked why people like George W Bush so much.  A caller summarizes what a lot of people thought, he was like them.  He was likeable.  He wore cowboy hats and had done some drinking and wasn’t a stereotypical politician.  Someone said he seemed like a guy you could have a beer with.

And then Jim Phillips somehow read my mind.  That’s fine and dandy, but is that the guy you want sitting across from the leader of Russia trying to talk us out of a war?  Is that the guy you want making decisions about how best to run the economy?  I don’t want Joe Six Pack doing that job.  I don’t know if I want Joe Six Pack doing my taxes at the H&R Block in the mall next to the Panda Express.  I want someone smarter than me.  I want someone smarter than most of the people I know.

But this is what it’s come to.  We’ve always voted on the candidate’s images.  But to vote for John McCain because Sarah Palin is on a ticket (and keep in mind, she was appointed that position, not chosen like eighteen million people who elected Barack Obama in the primaries), is no better than me voting for Obama because he’s black like me.  No better than voting for John McCain because he’s not black like me.  Jessica once explained the Sweet Valley High novels she read in her youth and when she told me about them she said, in retrospect, she probably liked them not because they were good, but because the lead character was named Jessica.  And that’s the behavior I expect from children.

 

 

Let’s understand something here.  I am not criticizing anybody with a “Palin!” sticker on their car but more the concept of supporting a Vice-Presidential candidate over the Presidential candidate.  Everybody has their own reasons they vote and that’s their business.  I have said nothing here that I wouldn’t say to anyone’s face except I believe, like child-rearing and religion, you choose what works for you in politics.  That’s your business and I’ll leave you to your own devices.

The point to this is it took me almost twenty years but I was right with Jessica’s father.  I guess we do vote for Vice-Presidents.

PS – You could make the argument that the title of this blog is derogatory calling Palin followers lemmings.  The original title was “Vice-Precedents.”  In truth, it’s just a clever title and Jimmy likes puns.  I also called my friend Tina and asked for her permission before I posted it and she agreed.  I didn’t, however, call Jessica since she doesn’t have the internet and like making fun of the Amish on television, she’ll never find out.

The Masculine Mystique

Do you know the difference between a Chick Flick and a Guy Movie? In a Chick Flick, one person dies very slowly (Love Affair, Steel Magnolias, The Notebook, A Walk To Remember); in a Guy Movie, lots of people die very quickly (Raiders Of The Lost Ark, 28 Days Later, Gladiator and anything word the word ‘Bruckheimer’ in the opening credits).  Often entire cities (Armageddon), sometimes entire planets (Star Wars).

Natalie and I were watching The Women… not the current one in theatres with Annette Bening (uber-milf), Jada Pickett Smith (hot), Debra Messing (hotter), Eva Mendez (Man down! Man down!) and the original 80’s Manic Pixie Girl who’s former cuteness shall not be named. We were watching the original; the one from 1939 that George Cukor got kicked off of Gone With The Wind to direct because he was better suited to direct “dames” (Leo Mayer’s words, not mine… my word was MILF so feminist send your emails… now). For those unfamiliar, it’s 130 speaking roles, all women, not a man in sight. It was remade in the 1956 as The Opposite Sex, this time as a musical and with guys including Leslie Nielsen back when you could call him Shirley and he would just take it like a man. The movie is essentially 131 minutes of women complaining about their cheating men while unbeknownst to them (but beknownst to us) those very women are in the room with them. There is a lot of deciding whether they should leave their husbands or forgive their infidelities and scenes of children being explained how divorce works…

SNORE… sorry. I dozed off.

Now my train of thought works like this: This movie has no men. Are there any movies that have no women? John Carpenter’s brilliant The Thing (although the original 1956’s Thing From Another World did). There’s Predator that has a woman for no good reason. They could have just removed her as they could have with Adrienne Barbeau in Escape From New York. There really doesn’t have to be women in Dr Strangelove, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Clockwork Orange, Platoon, Apocalypse Now or Full Metal Jacket (since they only scream in Vietnamese and then get killed). There are no female speaking roles in Lawrence Of Arabia. I can’t remember any women of importance in Patton or Saving Private Ryan (well there is Ryan’s mother but she has no dialogue and you don’t even see her face). The point is, women in men’s movies are so easily omitted. Even in a movie like JFK or Malcolm X, the women are reduced to wives worrying about their husbands.  I would like to think the Betty Shabazz, wife of a sixties civil rights leader has more to her then, “when are you coming home, Malcolm?”

Now all those movies I would consider masculine movies. They are about men being men. Even a movie like Road To Perdition which my brother calls the second best movie about fathers and sons he’s ever seen (the first? Finding Nemo) is about fathers, respect, revenge and breaking the ties that prevent you from becoming your own man. Guy stuff.

Consequently, I started thinking of the stereotypical Chick Flick and realized all girl movies revolve around men as a catalyst. In Beaches, had their marriage gone well, these two chicks never would have seen each other again. In Brokedown Palace they’re in a Thailand prison because one of them (I’m still not sure which one) did something stupid with a cute boy. Sleepless In Seattle, An Officer And A Gentleman and When Harry Met Sally… are about finding the person you’re “meant to” be with. Even the Sex And The City movie (as well as the series) at its heart is about women and their relationships as if it weren’t for men, they’d have nothing to talk about.

In my best Carrie Bradshaw iMac impression (CLOSE ON SCREEN TEXT):

And it makes me wonder, is there more to women’s relationships than just relations?

Now I am not saying I dislike the movies listed above. In fact, I own most of them because I’m just that kind of guy. I do hate The Notebook which isn’t even mentally challenged… it’s flat out retarded. There are two men she has to choose from and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist guess she went with the one she was in love with that her mother thought wasn’t good enough for her. Let me see, I have a uterus, do I want to make the logical decision or the emotional one? If you really wanted to be clever she should have married Ryan Gosling but James Garner should have been the James Marsden who never married, always loved her and after her husband died and Alzheimer’s set in, he wanted her to relive her happiest moments by reading her own love story to the woman he could never have.

Yeah, I should I write screenplays.

I am the guy who owned five of the seven seasons of Sex And The City before I met Natalie and had to go with my sister-in-law to the movie with eight of her friends I had never met. I went willingly while the other straight men in the audience could hear the first Indiana Jones movie since 1989 in the next theatre and realized God had forsaken them. Some strange woman gave me shit in a Best Buy when I was buying the four-disc edition of Gone With The Wind because it was older than me. News Flash: The movie is seventy years old… it’s older than most of the people in this state. For the record, I was also buying the three-disc edition of Hellboy because it was double-feature night, Mancard reinstated.

You could make the argument Hollywood is run by men but The Devil Wears Prada, 27 Dresses, PS I Love You, Beaches, When Harry Met Sally…, Sleepless In Seattle were all written or directed by women. It isn’t that every woman should be a feminist or anything about these movies is anti-feminist. Soul Plane was directed by a black guy and the highest grossing film by a black director is Scary Movie… I have to sleep at night knowing that. The same way I wish black people could make movies that celebrated black people without racism being a factor, I would think women could do the same. Make movies that celebrated who they were without that thing being wives or mothers… just about them being women.

Understand, I am not saying there is anything wrong with those things.  I am not saying women or Hollywood should eschew these concepts as negative, because they aren’t.  I find it odd that somehow women aren’t women without these tenants.

Then again, maybe men have it all wrong. And being masculine and manly isn’t Keanu Reeves being able to bend time and space with his mind (and still feel the need to carry a gun) to destroy an all-powerful computer in Armani. Maybe being men should be about being husbands and fathers and not saving the world from super-powered, immortal Chinese mummies.