Saturday

As Andrew has already mentioned, we all had a great time in the city this Saturday. Our first stop was Slainte, an Irish pub playing inexplicably chipper music. (It's pronounced "Slan-cha," because the Irish are crazy.) But we did get to drink Kathy's favorite beer, Smithwick's (pronounced "Smiddick's," because the Irish are crazy). Plus, we bought some potato chips (pronounced "crisps," because the Irish are... well, you know) which offered the enticing chance of winning a buffalo. Unfortunately, only Irish need apply, buffalowise.

Then we went to Nicole's show. Nicople Maynard's art is currently hanging in the Bowery Gallery. Much of her work reimagines feminine power within the context of women in various relationships with some semiotically-charged mythical beasts, such as minotaurs, centaurs, and unicorns. It's powerful, and the looseness of its physical representation allows the images -- or rather, the concept of the images and how she frames them -- stay with you perhaps longer than a more photorealistic depiction might. You can see for yourself here. Like Andrew, the one image that I found most haunting with the juxtaposition of the Abu Ghraib prisoner with the Statue of Liberty, but that certainly wasn't the only image I took home with me.

After that, we had dinner and drinks at the Chelsea Brewing Company (pronounced just like you'd expect, even though Americans are crazy). I must remember to buy cinnamon and pepperment schnappes (schnappeses?) to flavor hot apple cider and hot chocolate. Becuase tasty though it was, $8 for a little mug was insane.

Andrew's also right in that it was good to hang out with so many friends. Hi friends!

Rob

The Death of Politics

Well, not really, But I think I'm going to try to pull back a bit from the political stuff on this blog. Mostly because until I have a direction to focus my anger, I'd rather not just feed on the anger of others -- or feed my anger with theirs. I want to have something to say, and not just post snarky comments like my last one. (This isn't to say that I won't snark now and then ... just that hopefully my snark will be better, purer, and running at 100% efficiency.)

I do have one more political post in me -- about the time bomb in a so-called "Defense of Marriage" amendment that should worry the hell out of straight folks -- but I want to let it percolate for a little while longer.

Plus, I'm sure that the Bush Leaguers will do something that merits all sorts of scorn any day now, and I'll be back to help pour it on. But good God, I hike, play D&D and Texas hold-em, work out, go to work every day, watch tv, see movies, read comics, and have a new house I'm trying to get in order. I should have something else to talk about every now and then.

And that time, for now, is now.

Bottom line: I want him out. You (probably) want him out. And by the time four years are up, some portion of the 51 percent that voted for him will be slapping their collective foreheads saying, "What were we thinking?"

Watch and wait. And when the time comes, act.

Rob

Half Empty?

An optomist thinks Bush will take away all our rights. A pessismist thinks we'll be killed by terrorists before that happens.

Or is that the other way around?

Rob

Coo-roo-coo-ooo

Okay, enough with Canada.

I get it already.

Liberal friends have sent me a number of maps showing a merged blue-state U.S. with Canada, a fantasy that it’s kind of nice to indulge for a moment or two. (My favorite of the maps labeled the remaining red-state America as “Jesusland.”) On the other hand, a conservative friend has been telling me about the number of hits on Canada’s immigration web page.

To the former, I have to say if you’re going, you’ll need a parka. Because Canada ain’t coming here. But you’d do us all more good if you moved to Ohio or Florida instead. To the latter: You’re not getting rid of us that easily. To my wife, I say: We just bought this house! And we’ll never be able to sell it until we finish redoing the guest room anyway, so we’re pretty much stuck here until 2006. (That’s a joke, honey. Put down the scissors and my early Alan Moore Swamp Thing.)

And sure, I know the Canada thing is just a joke, a way of letting off steam. The people actually thinking about moving to Canada are few and far between, and they were probably already thinking about it before. But I think something very important gets lost in the shuffle when we talk like this.

This country is great. We have so much to be proud of, and so much to be thankful for, in both the red states and the blue. I like to see off-Broadway shows, but I want to sit in a sweltering Preservation Hall and hear kickass Dixieland jazz too. I’ll bodysurf on the Jersey shore, but I’ve rarely known such peace as I did floating in the still waters of the Gulf of Mexico. I want bagels and southern barbecue. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Mann’s Chinese Theater belong in the same country.

Forty-five percent of Virginians voted for Kerry. Forty-eight percent of Nevada did. These people don’t deserve the scorn liberals have been throwing at the red states, and they don’t deserve to be abandoned, either. More Texans voted for Kerry than did Michiganders, but Michigan is blue and Texas is red, and we’re gonna break it down that way? Nonsense. There’s no way on earth we should give up the South by Southwest Music Festival.

Look, this Canada talk is silly. I’ve tried lasagna in Quebec City. It’s inedible. I love the place, but the food? Not so much. Trust me, Bush or no Bush, you would not vote for this lasagna.

And neither would you vote to secede, when it comes right down to it.

Rob

Sofa King

From Lewis Black's "Back in Black," on last night's Daily Show:

"The voice of the people has been heard. I'm not going to imitate it, out of
respect for the mentally retarded."

Rob

WWJD?

Millions of people turned out for Bush on election day, and a sizable chunk of them are Christian. And it started me to thinking: What would Jesus have said to do in response to 9/11?

And the only answer I can come up with is to turn the other cheek.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying this is the smart thing, or even the right thing to do under the circumstances. But – and please, correct me if I’m wrong – isn’t it the Christian thing to do? Should we be seeking retribution, or even justice, for this? Isn’t that God’s job?

I haven’t read a whole lot of the Bible, so maybe I’m missing some nuance. But if I’m right, then why haven’t I heard any clergy advocating this course of action? Why haven’t any of our Christian politicians, including the President, try to stop this cycle of violence?

I know part of the answer – “Because the real world doesn’t work that way.” And I can see the point. But isn’t one of the tenets of Fundamentalist Christianity that the real world DOES work the way the Bible says it does? That Jesus’s way is the only way into heaven?

If so, how do they live with themselves?

(And if not, what am I missing in the equation? I'm not just trying to stir up trouble. I’m genuinely curious.)

Rob

P.S. Yes, Jeri, your book really did a number on me.

Hopes for the new term

I’d written a piece longhand on what I think this election says about America, but looking it over, it’s pretty depressing. It may go up on the blog later, but for now, I want to talk about my hopes for the new term.

In his concession speech, John Kerry enjoined all Americans to work together for a common cause. That’s an excellent thing to hope for, but it’s not very realistic. It’s like hoping that one day I’ll hear the news that John Ashcroft was found dead from choking on the semen of a male prostitute. It’s just not that likely.

So here are some things I’m hoping for in the next four years.

I hope Bush makes some genuine, rather than merely cosmetic, headway against terrorists, instead of creating an environment that breeds more.

I hope the news media is not cowed by the White House the way it was during the first term. I hope it shines a bright light on its activities, and that people pay attention when it does.

I hope that the more moderate Republicans in the House and Senate will take stands against some of the administration's truly repellent ideas. I doubt that Arlen Specter will be seeking reelection when he’s 80 in six years – it would be nice if he’d take point on this. (He can’t be happy with the Republican establishment for his treatment during the primaries.)

I hope that Democrats will find a way to appeal to Southern and Midwestern voters in congressional and senate races.

I hope Fox News will try to restrain itself from cheering whenever we kill innocent people in other countries.

I hope Bush appoints no more than two Supreme Court justices, and I hope his appointments are either very old or have angered the Mob.

I hope everyone has the good sense to keep their grubby mitts off the Constitution.

I hope Karl Rove gets gang-raped by hillbillies. Or orangutans. Or sharks.

I’m sure I’m hoping for other things too. I’ll let you know when I figure out what they are.

Rob

Long Day

Woke up, voted, drove to PA, canvassed for Kerry/Edwards in Glenolden and Yeadon. I've never seen so many people as fired up to vote as I have in Yeadon -- it was a wonderful experience.

On the drive home, I pulled over twice to nod off for a few minutes.

And now I'm home, and they want me to wait for Ohio? I need my sleep!

Catching Zs now. President can wait. Friggin' buckeyes.

Rob

We're gonna win.

Just watch.

(Well, vote, then watch.)

Rob

Good Luck

It's been a long, ugly campaign. Good luck to both candidates.

(Of course, I think the luckiest thing that could happen to Bush is for him to lose the election, and not have to finish what he started. He might also manage to avoid some of the avalanche of scandal teetering in his direction.)

We'll see tomorrow night, I hope.

Rob

The Osama Endorsement

I've already written that trying to pick who bin Laden would want for president is a fool's game. But Mark Evanier put it much better in this post:

My guess is he doesn't care who's in the White House any more than we care
who Al Qaeda names Employee of the Month.

If you aren't already checking out his site, you oughta. He's a clearheaded fella, and funny, too.

Rob

I'm an Alligator...

Taking a break from all the political blogging for a moment to ask -- what's your favorite opening line to a song? Not the whole verse -- maybe not even the whole thought -- just that first gulp of music that practically forces you to listen further. My example is David Bowie's "Moonage Daydream." This two guitar chords and his declaration "I'm an alligator" are all he ever needed to get my interest. I mean, WTF?

So what's yours?

Rob

The T-Shirt Speaks!

... which means I’d better wash it soon.

But the T-shirt I’m talking about in particular is one I was given during a production of The Compleat Works of Wllm Shkspr (abridged) at the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival years ago – in the summer of 2000, I think. It’s a great show, funny as hell. For one part, I was lucky enough to be called up on stage to run in circles and shout some line that was supposed to represent Hamlet’s subconscious or superego or something. (Anyone who’s seen me run knows that the scene was probably twice as funny as usual because of this.) Be that as it may, when the scene was over, T-shirts dropped from the ceiling for every audience participant. The shits had quotes from Shakespeare on them. Mine was from Richard III, and read: “Woe to that land that’s groverned by a child.” The first R in “groverned” was crossed out with a red x, correcting it.

Naturally, I thought of George Bush, who was poised to win the Republican nomination.

(Okay, I probably thought of Dan Quayle, too, since he was a lousy speller, in public, at least. But, as usual, Bush was on my mind.)

And when I look at all the mistakes he’s made, I’d have to say the T-shirt was a bit prophetic. I’ve known that for a while now. But the T-shirt is speaking in a whole new way, that I’ve only understood just now.

For some reason, the red x – and ONLY the red x, not any of the other red on the shirt – has completely faded away. Disappeared completely. And it’s occurred to me that that’s a symbol of how much worse this administration is than what I expected. Because, stupid mistake though it was, at least it got corrected. But now I’m just walking around with a misspelled shirt, pretending that nothing’s wrong. Sort of like saying “I support the troops” while sending them over to die for a series of lies. Except without all the widows and orphans left behind, because it’s just a stupid T-shirt.

It’s time to correct this groverning child. Let’s give him an F and leave him behind.

Rob

UPDATE: Then again, nobody's perfect. As soon as I posted this, I noticed I had written "when the scene was over, T-shits dropped from the ceiling." Which is a helluva lousy thank-you gift.

Still the One? Not so fast...

Speaking of music, the thief-in-chief got called on a copyright violation. From the AP:

Bush Asked to Stop Using 'Still the One'

WASHINGTON - The Bush campaign said Friday it would stop using the 1970's
hit "Still the One" at campaign rallies after the songwriter, no fan of the
president, claimed the Republicans never got permission.

John Hall, a former Democratic county legislator in upstate New York, co-wrote the song and recorded it with his band Orleans in 1976. He complained Friday morning about the campaign's use of the song at the president's events.

...

Hall, still a working musician at 56, wrote "Still the One" with his then-wife, Johanna D. Hall. The two, as well as surviving members of the band, are supporters of Democratic Sen. John Kerry and didn't want their work used to promote Bush's re-election.

"I'm not just some guy that's stoned out and happened to write a song, and even if I were, it would still be a problem, because you should always ask permission to use the work," Hall said.

That's just too rich.

Rob

Everytime I think I've posted my last post about 'em...

... they pull me back in. Here's Jim's Big Ego's newest tune, WTFMFWTFAYT, in an easily downloadable mp3 form.. with their blessings, o'course.

For everyone who's as frustrated as I am about the dabacle-in-chief, who'll have 79 days to pack. 83 if he starts now.

UPDATE: Don't have kids around when you listen. No, really.

Rob

Victory Salute

Apropos of nothing, here's a video of GWB giving the camera the finger back when he was governor of Texas.

It doesn't make him a bad guy. Harmless fun. But his little chuckle goes on a bit too long, and kinda creeps me out.

Rob

More on Abu Ghraib

Phillip Carter has written an excellent article for the Washington Monthly on how the abuses at Abu Ghraib were a result of the Bush administrations policies, including the suspension of the Geneva convention. He also explains the ways that simple, seemingly innocuous methods (like "sleep deprivation") turn into nightmares, and details how our actions there will come back to haunt us in the future.

You can, and should, read it here.

Rob

Bush endorses Kerry

At a campaign stop today, Bush was quoted as saying:

For a political candidate to jump to conclusions without knowing the facts is
not a person you want as your commander in chief.

What's with his flip-flopping alluva sudden?

Rob

Family Matters

My brother Tom and I have been emailing each other about my last post (the letter to Mom), and I've posted the letters to that post's comments section. If you don't normally read the comments, you might want to take a look. It's a pretty good discussing, and I'm not sure where it will take us next.

Rob

Letter to Mom

This is a letter I wrote to my mom the other day. I think it’s pretty self-explanatory. Since I think it’s my best writing I’ve done about the election, I asked her if I could post it here. (She said yes.)

Mom,

Yesterday, you asked me why I didn’t think the President had “moral strength.” I had a hard time putting it into words – I find him outrageous on so many levels that I often don’t know where to begin.

But I’ve found it. Looking back, it’s the moment when it crystallized for me that GWB was not simply a bad president, but a disastrous one, one who, despite his easygoing manner, is actually undermining everything that makes America great.

That moment was Abu Ghraib.

Mom, seeing those pictures turned my stomach. I couldn’t believe that Americans were doing these things. When I was younger, I didn’t have a very high opinion of soldiers, but that’s changed in the last few years. I’m sure there are plenty of soldiers I wouldn’t like personally (although probably just as many that, like Mark G., I would like a whole lot), but I’ve grown to respect what they do and the peace they keep a great deal. They’re often called on to dirty their hands in a way that I don’t think I could ever do. They do it to keep me safe, and you safe, and people in other countries safe. Often, it’s in high-stress environments, keeping an already bad situation from becoming incalculably worse.

These men and women deserve our respect. And in most cases, they earn it.

But then there was Abu Ghraib. There were pictures of naked prisoners, prisoners threatened with dogs. Prisoners forced to stand motionless for 12 hours at a stretch. People, men and women, were raped and sexually humiliated. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen anything more horrifying to me – because I knew that my own people did this. Not the Germans, not the Japanese, not Osama bin Laden. My people. People who grew up in towns like ours.

It turned my stomach for days. The photos kept coming, and all I could think about was how wrong it was. We’re Americans, I thought. We don’t torture. We’re Americans.

To my mind, there are two people ultimately responsible for this (aside from George Bush himself). One is Donald Rumsfeld, who is in charge of the military, and who let this happen. The Red Cross estimates that 70 to 90 percent of the Iraqis detained were held in error, on his watch. The other is John Ashcroft, whose Justice Department wrote a memo that blurred the line between torture and acceptable interrogation techniques.

Looking at the situation, I have to ask: What would a moral person do, if this happened on his watch? Ask yourself what Dad would have done if he were President when it happened. What would you have done? What do you think Rev. Ev would do, or me, or Tommy, or anyone else who you can think of as moral?

Here’s my answer, for every one of these people: They would get to the bottom of why it happened, and they would make sure it never happened again. In doing this, they would hold the right people accountable – not just the people who got their hands dirty, but the people who encouraged or allowed it to happen. They would replace these people and move forward. And they would take personal responsibility for their own oversight, and assure America and the world that it would never happen again.

That didn’t happen. The administration scrambled to put a lid on the photos, trying to crack down on the people who took and shared the pictures, rather than the torturers themselves. Soon after the story broke, the President stood by Rumsfeld and called him one of the best Secretaries of Defense the country’s ever had. Instead of focusing on the problem, he focused on political damage control, hoping the story would blow over.

And amazingly and sadly, it did.

But whenever the President has been asked about any mistakes he’s made, he never mentions Abu Ghraib. It’s understandable that he doesn’t want to dwell on it during an election. But neither he nor any of his staff have ever taken any sort of responsibility for the horrible treatment prisoners received there. That’s neither moral nor strong.

And that’s why I can’t vote for him.

I know you’re planning to vote for Bush, Mom. I can only ask, please consider his actions, rather than what he says about himself. Does he measure up to your standards of what a good man should be?

I can tell you he doesn’t meet mine. Not by a long shot.

I love you, whatever you decide.

Rob

The shelling has begun

There was just an enormous barrage of fireworks somewhere near my neighborhood. We could barely see them from our attic window. Does anyone have any idea why? Because we're completely in the dark -- aside from the bursts of light we can see just beyond the trees, that is.

Rob

Who can protect you?

In the end, domestic policies aside, this election all comes down to terrorism. We’ll vote for who we think can keep us safe. And in the end, that’s the main reason I’m voting for John Kerry.

I work in New York City. Terrorism isn’t some abstract concept to me. It’s not something that will happen to someone else. I work two blocks from the Empire State Building. I take the train to and from Penn Station (right under Madison Square Garden) every day. These are targets. The next time a terrorist attacks, I could die. This is real to me. This is what I think when I get off the train in the morning. Not every morning, but enough.

When I walk past the Empire State Building, I keep an eye out for people with walkie talkies. I called 911 once about a suitcase left near a trash can.

I’m not kidding.

President Bush’s response to the terrorism threat has been ineffectual, and in many ways counterproductive. He sends Tom Ridge out to raise the terror alert any time he needs a bump in the polls (studies show the boost lasts about two weeks, but is shrinking – expect one next weekend, another little scare for Halloween). And Bush has let the Republican Congress dole out the antiterrorism money to all sorts of porky pet projects, rather than spending it sensibly, focusing on high-threat areas like NYC, DC, and LA. And he hasn’t taken proper steps to keep our ports, nuclear reactors, and chemical plants safe. These places tend to be privately owned, and Bush steadfastly refuses to regulate businesses, even when imposing new laws limiting individual freedom. The gap in our security is as big as his blind spot.

Meanwhile, Attorney General John Ashcroft hasn’t yet made a single conviction for terrorism – this, after detaining over 5,000 people. Not one conviction. Zero for 5000 isn’t exactly a stellar batting average, particularly with using the big red fat bat of the Patriot Act. Now he wants to expand the act. Hey John – show us you can do something with what you got, first. Besides disrupting thousands of lives, that is.

And Iraq? More and more, it just seems to paint a target on us here at home. Not only hasn’t it helped us in the fight against terrorism (if that were a really our priority, we would have taken out Abu Musab Zarqawi on one of the several chances we had before the war, rather than keep him around as a pretext to go to war), but it presents us as weak. We’re losing ground there and terrorists are getting bombs into the supposedly safe “Green Zone”, all because our president didn’t think the overwhelming force we normally present was necessary.

But an even bigger sign of weakness is the target he chose. Instead of focusing our efforts on the one who attacked us, we soon turned our attention to the one he thought we could beat. We’re flailing our arms wildly, hoping to hit something – anything – to show we’re tough. In middle school, we had a word for that: spaz. And no one respects a spaz.

On the other hand, Kerry perceives the War in Iraq and our antiterrorism efforts as two different things. They’re linked, but they are not one and the same. I’ve no doubt he will use force when necessary, but not without judgement. He’s an intelligent man, one who isn’t afraid of reading. Someone who would read a Presidential Daily Briefing entitled “Bin Laden determined to strike in U.S.” and actually do something about it, rather than continuing his vacation.

Yes, I blame Bush for not preventing September 11. I blame him for not taking the threat to American lives seriously. I blame him for his deer-in-the-headlights inaction when the attacks took place. I blame him for going after Saddam Hussein when we had Bin Laden in our sights. And I blame him for putting on a dog-and-pony show of terror alerts, airport security, and bogus detentions to make me think I’m safer, without actually making me safer at all.

This is the worst president we’ve ever had. None of us are safe while he’s in office.

Rob

21

Every so often I go to Atlantic City (or sometimes even Las Vegas) and play blackjack. And nine times out of ten, it just reminds me how lucky I must be in love. Because I sure as hell wasn't getting any decent cards.

Rob

Team America: World Police

Trey Parker and Matt Stone are funny guys. They know how to be funny. they do it alost every week with South Park. The South Park movie was one of my favorites in the last decade.

All of which makes Team America: World Police so disappointing. It's a waste of 9 bucks, and it's a waste of your time. There are a couple of funny moments, but in no way were the worth the hour and a half of boredom and pain that we sat through. See something else. Stay home. If you get the urge to see this movie, drop your car keys down a sewer. Or chop off a finger every minute until your urge to go to the emergency room becomes greater. It's just bad. I wish I'd been offended by it -- getting pissed off galvanizes me. But this movie was so feeble, even when it tried to rile me, it just left me cold.

What crap.

Rob

Anyone Feel a Draft?

Josh Marshall raises an excellent point, and gives details about the Bush Campaign's latest attempt at supressing free speech.

In a nutshell: Rock the Vote has been using the possibility of a draft to motivate young people to register to vote. Considering how many troops we have in Iraq, and how long they could be there for, it's certainly a possibility, however distateful it might be. And the people who would be most concerned are the very people that RTV is trying to reach. (Of course, their parents and toehr loved ones should be very concerned too. And if your kid isn't draft age now, just remember that they're growing every day.)

The Bush administration, all the way up to the President himself, have said that there would be no draft, that our all-volunteer army is doing just fine. (This, despite the fact that a substantial chunk of the National Guard isn't, y'know, guarding the nation. At least not our nation. They're in Iraq, because we can't spare more troops from the regular army.)

And so, the chairman of the Republican National Committee has sent them a cease-and-desist letter (.pdf link) to shut them up, threatening to revoke their IRS advantages that come with being labveled a "non-partisan" group -- because the idea of a draft is purportedly so preposterous that they're obviously just doing this to cause trouble.

And his proof of this? A few soundbites from Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld. Essentially: "Because we said so."

That's not good enough. Not from anyone, but especially not from these guys. This is thuggery, pure and simple.

Rob

Debate 3

I think Kerry took this one by a hair. He just seemed more substantial than Bush. His answers were more complete, and he seemed like a solid man -- someone you can trust.

But enough about that...there's a sex scandal abrewin'! Is it any surprise that onscreen bully Bill O'Reilly is a sexual bully off-camera?

Warning: Disgusting behavior.

Rob

That's it.

I'm done. Click here to see what I finished. Then scroll up.

Rob
(phew!)

Book Recommendation

Completely out of left field, let me recommend No Ordinary Time, by Doris Kearns Goodwin. It’s an amazingly detailed yet human portrait of Franklin Delano and Eleanor Roosevelt and their time in office. I read it a few years ago, and loved it.

Universal Monster

So, who’s your favorite Universal monster? There are basically seven pics from the old Universal Studios horror movies – Dracula, Frankenstein, Wolfman, the Mummy, the Invisible Man, the Bride of Frankenstein, and the Creature from the Black Lagoon.

I’m a fan of the Gill-man. I even have a little stuffed animal of him.

I'd go back in a second.

One of the best places we went on our honeymoon was this little town south of Paris called Nolay (not an auspicious name for a town to visit on your honeymoon, I know). This town was wonderful. It was the perfect little French village. We took a twelve-mile walk around the countryside with wine and cheese in out backpack, and relaxed at this Tabac (a tabacconist shop/café) and drank great wine and was introduced to one of my all-time favorite sandwiches, the chevre chaud. It’s goat cheese, ham, gouda and tomato on a baguette, warmed in the oven. Delicious doesn’t cover it. I didn’t know comfort food came in other languages.

I just remembered...

I think the second time I saw Picasso, Jon Stewart was playing the title role. I might have even interviewed him beforehand.

Wow.

Wild, Crazy

Steve Martin is one of my favorite writers. He’s had some clunkers, but ever since LA Story, he’s had this sad whimsy about him that really draws me to his work. And happy news, his fantastic play Picasso at the Lapin Agile is in pre-production to be a movie. I've seen this play three times, and loved it every time.

Kathy & I stopped at the Lapin Agile when we were in Paris. Sadly, we never got there when it was open – hopefully we’ll have a chance to go back someday.

Rob

Myth! Myth! ..... Yeth?

I figure I’d cheat a bit, and continue the modern myths thing here. I remember something Peter David once wrote which struck a chord in me. It was an idea that said that myths are fictional characters that we think of as real. Not in the sense of being living, breathing people, but in the sense of being able to see them without their fictional context.

The example he gave was Captain Kirk. If you asked a dozen people on the street who Captain Kirk is, most of them will tell you he’s the captain of the Enterprise... instead of saying he’s the lead of the Star Trek tv show, and was played by William Shatner. They’ll know those things too, and probably give them to you right after, but the foremost thing in their minds would be he was the captain of the Enterprise.

I was thinking about this on the train today, thinking about characters that have this same resonance with us – that we think of their reality first, before we think about what they are in our own reality (fictional characters).

I think Charlie Brown meets the criteria. So does James Bond. I’m not sure about Indiana Jones – I think he’s probably too closely associated with his three movies (despite appearing in other media, including TV, novels, and comics) to be there yet. But I think the Simpsons certainly have made the grade. I think constant exposure is important, and that’s where Indy falls down, but Homer and his family certainly qualify.

Can you think of any characters created after the Simpsons that have reached this point? I have a couple ideas, but I want to hear your thoughts.

Good Grief!

I’m reading the first volume of The Complete Peanuts. Fantagraphics is publishing the entire strip, in order, in a huge series of classy volumes. Most cover two years of the run, but the first also covers the tail end of 1950, when it began.

And it’s fantastic. Reading the later years of the strip, I forgot how funny it once was. And it’s a joy to see Charles Schulz inventing the characters, one by one. Did you know that Schroeder showed up before Lucy? Fact. And Snoopy is a great character, even better without speaking/thinking. I don’t know if I’ll pick up all of these books, and I’ll certainly look for discounts, but they’re worth keeping an eye on.

Because Charlie Brown is one of our modern myths.

If I had pets…

I’d talk about ’em here, because I’m seriously running out of things to say.

So here's to Texas, Brandy, Sam, Felix, Sproing, and Mazey. Were you here, you'd probably do something cute or infuriating that I could write about.

Month of agony

It’s been about a month since Kathy & I joined the Y and started working out. I haven’t lost much weight, but I’ve been much less out of breath when I’ve run to catch the train, so I guess that’s something.

Seriously, things are going well with it, and I’m feeling more fit because of it. Not that you could tell with any mass-measuring scientific instruments. But that’ll come, I’m sure.

Speaking of Stripping…

The other night, Kathy & I were watching Action, tivoed from around 2:30 or 3 in the morning on Comedy Central. It’s a great show, cruelly funny in all the right ways. But as I was fast-forwarding though the commercials, one caught my eye enough that I went back to it later.

Yes, it caught my eye because it had strippers on it, and cheap graphics. It said “sleaze” loud and clear, and really, can you blame me for being curious? But what I found was pure entertainment gold.

It was a help wanted ad for strippers. Some show bar in NJ is so desperate to get quality dancers that they’re advertising on Comedy Central. Because all the hotties are watching Jay Mohr at 3 a.m.

Stripping on the Weekends

Kathy & I have been stripping on the weekends. It’s a lot of work. I really did a number on my shoulder last week – heck, I was sore all over. But how else are we gonna get the paint off this wood?

Oh… what did you think I meant?

Actually, we’re using white disposable surgical gloves to keep the paint thinner off of our hands. And I have to say, whenever I snap a glove against my wrist as I put it on, my brain gets a signal that something frightfully kinky is about to happen. “All right.. bring out the gimp!'

Rob

Bush’s bulge

Chris clued me in to a bit of a tempest in the online news sources—it seems like the Hand Puppet is wearing a wire. An article on Salon.com has the skinny on Bush’s bulge, and what it might be. It might be so that he can get answers to debate questions, or maybe he needs help from some GOP Cyrano to practice his love like an OBGYN. Heck, maybe he’s just listening to smooth jazz—reason enough to boot him from office.

Me, I prefer to think of it as an endless loop of Mark Wahlberg saying “I’m a star. I’m a big, big star!”

Clobberin' Time

The debates are just about to start. Go get 'im, Big John.

It's astounding...

I just changed the time back. Otherwise, I'd have to remember to change the time for EVERY post I made, and I'm just not willing to make that effort to remember. So keep in mind, this is all happening 3 hours later than what the clock says it is, or 3,000 miles east of where you think I might be, or something like that.

Let's do the time warp again, baby!

Batterbatterbatterbatter SWING batter!

Kathy just called me downstairs because she had some angel food cake batter. I can't convey how yummy it is, but let me try:

Lick your computer. Seriously. I'm trying here. Lick your computer.



(I'm waiting.)



See? It's like that, only a hundred million times better. Because what you did was just gross. And this batter is divine.

Batter. Truly chicken soup for the blogger's soul.

Tivo wears his war wound like a crown

I have to say, I’m really digging this Tivo contraption. I can watch Celebrity Poker, Family Guy, or Good Eats whenever I want. Plus, I’m not missing Smallville, Jack & Bobby, The Daily Show, The Venture Bothers, or any other cool shows. Of course, this means that TV is taking over my life. But I can look away! I can look away!

Oh, and I changed the time. It's 8:06. I think this is why my brother asked me if I was posting blog entries from work.

Rob

Time flies

I didn’t just say hi to Kathy for hours. I just realized that my blog clock is about three hours wrong. So I’m resetting it now. Or actually, the next post, so you’ll know when I came back.

My Wife Just Got Home

So I’m gonna kiss her and say hi. Be right back. With a more insightful post than this.

Another question

Who’s the scariest movie villain? The AFI says it’s Hannibal Lecter, but Darth Vader and the hunter from Bambi were also in the running. But since the release of Fahrenheit 9/11, I know who I’d pick.

Time …. Flowing like a river…

It’s taking forever to load my Queimada post. I’m two posts later in MS Word – post post-post, you might say, and it’s still uploading. Is it even POSSIBLE to blog 35 entries in one day? In an hour? I’m stalled at 75%. Well, at least I got a post out of it.

The Big Dog

Bloodhound continues to rock, by the way. It’s one of my favorite comics. Hopefully, the new issue will be out soon. I think Travis Clevinger is the best character comics have seen in years. Whether he’ll survive low sales is anybody’s guess. I hope he turns it around.

Queimada

The other night, when New Jersey Transit shut down for a while due to a transformer explosion, I decided not to squeeze onto the Path with ever other commuter in the city, but instead to go see a film. I caught Queimada, which was released in the US as Burn! in 1969. It was a terrific film. Brando plays an enigmatic Englishman who comes to the Carribean island of Queimada to foment a revolution against the Portuguese. Having doen that (and establishing British foothold in the new government and its sugar business), he leaves. Ten years later, he’s called on to go back, to put down a second revolution, led by Jose Dolores, the same revolutionary he trained years ago.

Brando is dubbed into Italian (the language of the production), and still his performance is vibrant. He’s amazing as he slowly begins to realize he’s the villain of the piece, and wants to make restitution, because he doesn’t have a villain’s heart.

The music is by Ennio Morricone, who did all those creepy whistly soundtracks for Sergione Leone’s westerns. The soundtrack to this is haunting in ways I can’t fully describe, although it probably won’t affect people who haven’t seen this movie the same way it did me.

Man, what a cool movie.

Native Food

There’s a place in NYC that sells the food of my people. I’m talking about Carl’s, which does a damn good cheesesteak. And even with trying to eat heathier food, I broke down today to have one and some cheese fries for lunch.

Heritage is important.

Headlight Savings Time

I can’t wait for Daylight Savings Time. When is it? Because when I drive home from the Y after working out, the sun is so completely in my eyes at one point that I can’t see a damn thing. I’ll rear-end someone for sure. Or someone equally blind will rear-end me. Neither is an acceptable option, so if we could just all agree to move dawn back an hour, I’d appreciate it.

Lightning in my Brain

I was at the gym today. It was a cardio day, and I decided to use the treadmill. At one point, I flipped the discman to Jim’s Big Ego’s “The Ballad of Barry Allen,” and started to run. Listening to a song about the Flash while jogging? It felt like my birthday.

And yes, I can’t stop talking about this band.

If you sucked down a lot of helium

What would you say or sing? Leave your suggestions here.

Damn.

That could a been three. Oh well, back to work.

Lynx

Lemme link to a couple of friends who have blogs that are worth paying attention to. Jeri Smith-Ready’s Seething in the Wilderness is consistently a good read. Her posts always turn out more literate than mine;I think that’s because she actually puts time into them. She’s got more of the do-gooder impulse than I do, or at least she doesn’t suppress hers as successfully. Her chief concern has always been the environment, whereas mine has been making snarky comments from the sidelines. So the fact that she can do both is astonishing and worthy of respect.

Jack Curtin has been blogging a lot longer than me, but his concerns (politics and beer) tend to line up with my interests pretty well. He’s a comic reader, too, or at least he was years ago, and the things are like crack, so I can’t imagine he gave ’em up. I met him when I used to edit his Liquid Diet column at The Suburban and Wayne Times. Drop by.

Mark Evanier is one of the fathers of blogging, at least to my mind. His News from Me site is chock-full of Hollywood history, comics, politics, and just plain stuff that he amazes me. He’s a fantastic writer, and you’ll be hooked quick. Even on his supermarket reports. Really.

Cold Turkey

A very conservative friend of mine is thinking of giving up politics after the election. Just stop thinking about it, stop talking about it, all of it.

It’s an interesting idea, one which might save my stomach lining. But I don’t think I’m quite there yet.

Best. T-Shirt. Ever.

Y’know, Greg (or He Who Blogs Only At the Full Moon) gave me the best T-shirt ever years ago. It shows a Calvin Klein ad with Homer Simpson on it. On the front is Homer, shirtless, with his Calvin underwear peeking over the waist of his pants. The back shows the same thing, but a read view.

And I can’t remember the last time I wore it when someone hasn’t told me how much they love it.

So thanks Greg.

By the way…

This 35 @ 35 thing was a complete spur-of the moment decision. I had no idea that I was going to do it until I sat down. So I got nothing planned.

Just so you know. Enjoy with without-a-nettiness.

Therefore...

I've been thinking I'm halfway to 70 all day long.

Times Tables

When I was a kid, comics were 35 cents. Consequently, I learned the 35 times tables quicker than just about any others. 35 x 2 is 70, x3 is 105, x4 is 140, which leaves me a dime for Lemonheads.

35

So. I'm 35 today. and one way I'm going to celebrate is with 35 quick little posts. Think I can't do it? Me neither.

Rob

God, I love this band...

So a fan made a new flash animation of a Jim's Big Ego song. And being the cool guys they are, they put a link to it in their mailing list email.

Like so.

Enjoy.

Rob

Outlook Murky. Try Again Later.

I’m curious. Did Dick Cheney’s suit look sorta blurry-fuzzy on anyone else’s TV during the debate? I talked about it with Kathy, and decided the insubstantial black murk around him was his “shroud of evil.” But a friend suggested it might have been the result of Cheney actually being a hologram beamed in from an undisclosed location.

Did any of you notice this? If you have any other explanations, I’d love to hear them.

Rob

The Elephant in the Room

Check out this transcript (courtesy of Wampum) of a post-debate interview with Aaron McGruder (creator of Boondocks) on CNN's Newsnight.

Rob

One bad mutha...

My favorite moment of the debate came at the very end, where Kerry, in his closing argument, said:

... who's the person who could be a commander in chief who could get your
kids home and get the job done... and win the peace.

And in that pause, I turned to Kathy, and chirped: "Shaft!"

Damn right.

Rob

Post-Debate Post

Okay, it probably comes as no surprise to most of you that I think Kerry won the debate. For one reason, I’m pretty virulently anti-Bush, so I was rooting for Kerry anyway. Second of all, because Kerry flat-out won it pretty handily.

Really, though, the winning conditions weren’t all that high. Heck, Bush beat the same conditions last year – to be a plausible candidate for President. To not be the caricature that the other side says you are. And, in Kerry’s case, to hold the same stage with the President without being diminished by him.

Kerry handled it wonderfully. He spoke clearly, and kept on-message without using the same words over and over and over again. (Kerry would repeat himself once or twice; Bush sounded like … ah, what the hell is it that he sounded like now that technology has made broken records obsolete? A macaw. A well-trained macaw.)

Granted, there were times that Bush held his own. The discussion about what to do about Korea really impressed me – not so much because I agreed with him, but because he actually seemed engaged in what he was saying. But in general, Bush looked peevish, and completely unaccustomed to someone standing up to him. (Which is probably because he is – he hasn’t held a press conference for months, and his public-speaking stops are carefully screened so that no one who disagrees with him can get in.)

But Kerry was in control. He jabbed at Bush, and Bush deflected most of his criticisms, but not all. (The fate of Osama bin Laden was a major source of contention, and, I thought, one of Kerry’s most effective attacks.) Bush tried to nail Kerry on the flip-flopper thing, and Kerry turned it right back around on him – “I made a mistake when I talked about the war, but the President made a mistake by taking us to war. Which is worse?” Bush didn’t land a punch.

Kerry didn’t knock Bush out, to continue the boxing analogy, and I don’t think Bush was every really on the ropes. But there were times where he looked like he thought he was on the ropes, and in those moments, he looked decidedly unpresidential.

I think Bush will be better prepared for round two, in the town-hall-style debate. But frankly, this was his strongest subject. He needed a win here, and he didn’t get one. Suddenly, Kerry is as plausible at national defense as Bush is – and Bush’s defense numbers were really what’s been keeping his campaign afloat in the polls. If they drop, Bush drops.

And we all might actually start becoming safer come January.

Rob

Please Hold

Wouldn’t it be great if when you called Nintendo and were put on hold, you would hear the Super Mario Brothers music?

Rob

My Kinda Boss...

You know what always makes me laugh? When I'm watching a cop show and the angry police captain wants to take an ornery detective off a case after some sort of mistake. "As of now, you're on vacation. I don't want to see you again for two weeks."

This is punishment? I've gotta start letting some typos through at work. "On page 42, you've left tree stand as one word, and you called the plural of deer, deers. Go to Bermuda."

Ah, for the life of a TV cop...

Rob

Letting the Anger Speak

-or-

Rob Makes the List!

I’m sick of it. Sick of reading about the government, sick of writing about them, sick of the news, sick of this fucking hand puppet who claims to be our president. I feel like some vitriol. Come along!

I propose buying giant microwaves to install in Texas and Connecticut. Wheel the fuckers up to Kennebunkport and Crawford and set ’em on full power. I’d like to see the entire Bush family sterilized by the cooking machine of the future. We’ve had too many years of Bushes in power – there’s been a Bush in six of the last seven Presidential elections. We’re through with them. We’re not a monarchy, and they are not the fucking royal family. So, my grand microwave ovens of urban legend*, sterilize away. Let ’em live out their lives, just don’t let them breed. Don’t let this blight plague another generation. We need new leaders. Or whatever it is they think they're doing -- we need someone else doing it.

It doesn’t matter if Jenna and Barbie have no political aspirations right now. You think Georgie had any ambition greater than finding greater quantities of new and expensive powders to suck up his nose? Imagine if he HAD gone to the National Guard physical he was ordered to go to. He wouldn’t have been able to sit still. Whenever I see Chevy Chase blinking up a storm on old SNL episodes, I think of Georgie, coked to the gills in his National Guard uniform. Damn, I hope that image goes away someday. I like Chevy Chase.

And it IS the family that’s the problem. Without his family connections, little Georgie would be selling pencil stubs from a can on some street corner, or maybe turning tricks for fatcats like Dick Cheney so he could get his next fix. I guess that’s not too different from now, except Bush is using our asses to do the job.

So yeah, John Ashcroft, put me on your list, I’ve said some naughty things about the President, and I’ve fantasized about irradiating his genes with giant imaginary cookware. But it feels better to be on the list, saying this stuff, than to be constantly looking over my shoulder for the mildest criticisms, wondering when John Law would call me up and tell me my first amendment rights no longer applied.

I’m sick of being polite about this. I’m sick of being nice. I’m sick of even making goddamn sense. All I’ve got are hate and fury and the truth, and as the Bushes and the Swifties and Karl Goebbels Rove have taught us, no one gives a fuck about the truth anymore.


Rob




*because, you know, microwave ovens actually don’t sterilize people. Truth.

Get Back, Honky Cat

Okay, I’m sure I don’t have the correct transcription of this. I was on a crosstrainer at the gym this morning, watching a closed-captioned broadcast of the Today show. So I’m relying on my sponge-sharp memory of someone typing as fast as they can to represent a person’s remarks.

They were talking about Cat Stevens – or Yusuf Islam, as he’s called today – being denied entrance into the country, sent back to England once his rerouted plane touched down in Maine. The show cut to someone they identified as a “security expert.” I don’t know if he was a representative of the government or what, but I’m pretty sure he had some authority. It’s not like he was the night watchman of a shopping mall. At the same time, it seems like he was criticizing the Department of Homeland Security for letting Stevens onto the plane in the first place.

So here’s what he said, in essence: “Sure, we can all laugh about it being Cat Stevens, but the next time it could be a real terrorist.” Yeah, that’s a laugh. If Cat Stevens is no threat, why was he on the no-fly list? Innocent people being detained and restricted is a hoot!

Now, Cat Stevens is no saint. The man endorsed the fatwa to kill Salman Rushdie for writing The Satanic Verses, years ago. Or did he?

Over at catstevens.com, he addresses the question. His comments were made during a lecture, when someone questioned him on the topic of the book. According to Cat, this is what he said:

After confirming that Islamic Law considers Blasphemy without repentance as a
capital offence, I stated clearly, “Under the Islamic law, Muslims are bound to
keep within the limits of the law of the country in which they live, providing
that it does not restrict the freedom to worship and serve God and fulfill their
basic religious duties (Fard ‘Ayn). One must not forget the ruling in Islam is
also very clear about adultery, stealing and murder, but that doesn’t mean that
British Muslims will go about lynching and stoning adulterers, thieves and
murders. If we can’t get satisfaction within the present limits of the law, like
a ban on this blasphemous book, ‘Satanic Verses’ which insults God and His
Prophets – including those Prophets honoured by Christians, Jews as well as
Muslims – this does not mean that we should step outside of the law to find
redress. No. If Mrs. Thatcher and her Government are unwilling to listen to our
pleas, if our demonstrations and peaceful lobbying does not work, then perhaps
the only alternative is for Muslims to get more involved in the political
process of this country. It seems to be the only way left for us.”

In essence: Yeah, it’s a capital crime under Islamic law, but that’s not the law that has jurisdiction in this case. We need to work within British law to get justice.

As far as I know, writing a novel is not a capital offense in England – so Cat isn’t advocating killing anyone. He just wants redress for what he perceives as blasphemy.

Now, this is Cat’s version of events, so it’s not a disinterested account. But I don’t find it hard to believe that the media distorted what is a fairly complicated position into an attention-grabbing soundbite. At the same time, Cat may be distorting what he originally said, after the fact. I looked on Snopes to get the real story, but they had nothing on it.

Either way, I think he’s wrong about Rushdie’s book–blasphemy is a religious offense, not a legal one. Stevens is within his rights to get offended, but any decent legal system will look at the evidence and wonder where the crime is. Freedom of speech supercedes the anyone’s “right” to not be offended.

(And strangely enough, the offensive passages of The Satanic Verses might not even correlate with Rushdie’s opinion. There has to be a conflict of ideas – and the stronger, more worthy the conflict, the better the novel’s potential to be good. No decent novel has all its characters parroting the same philosophy. Robert Heinlein, I’m looking at you.)

Arrgh – but this was a huge digression. What prompted me to write this in the first place is: either Cat Stevens is a threat or he isn’t. If he’s not, why can’t he fly here? But if he is, a) it’s no laughing matter, and b) why the hell was he let on that plane in the first place?

Which may have been the “security expert”’s point, at that.

Rob

Yeah, I'm a ray of sunshine...

Okay, back to what I was doing before I got happy.

This is how I feel about the upcoming election. This is how I feel about the choice we have.

I’m writing about the future.

No matter what, the next four years will be hard. We’re in a war. More and more people want to kill us. We have laws in place that allow authorities to overreact to minor signifiers of threat (lists of books borrowed from the library, for example), while we leave our ports, power plants and chemical warehouses ludicrously undefended. It’s difficult to sneak into the country, but considering how many people do it each year, it’s by no means impossible. But it’s important for the government to know what audiobooks I’m taking out?

But I’m digressing. I have a hard time resisting it--this administration frustrates me in every way, and makes me want to make lists, long lists of clever lies and stupid mistakes. But it’s not what’s going on here and now that concerns me so much.

I started thinking about the Iraq War, and came to the conclusion that it won’t be the last one. This war, and the way we went about it, will set in motion things that will start the next two or three wars, maybe more. More and more terrorists are being born with every gun fired, with every bomb dropped on a mother or a kid. Some of these people my have hated us already—but most of them had better things to do than try to kill us. They had families to raise, businesses to run. But when we kill those families with a show of shock and awe, when we leave their homes and shops in rubble, priorities change. Wouldn’t yours?

And so, there’s more war in our future—five, ten, fifteen years down the line, fueled by old hatreds but fanned by our arrogance and aggression. Some wars will be against states, some sparked by terrorists. Terrorists whose numbers would be dwindling if we were still in Afghanistan, instead of growing at alarming rates. And you and I won’t be fighting these wars. The chances of either of us dying in them is minimal—after all, we’re staying home.

No, it’s your kids, my nieces and nephews, people’s grandchildren who will be asked to fight these wars—and since there’s been discussion of reinstating the draft, they may not be even asked nicely. They may just be given a helmet and a gun, and flown to where the enemy is. This is what the President and the people he appointed have done to their future. Our future.

We don’t have a choice about the next four years. They’ll be awful, no matter who gets elected. But we’re on the brink of something horrible--an apocalyptic future George Bush brought us to, in his scattershot response to Sept. 11. Sometimes, I don’t know if it’s possible to pull us back from the brink, back to safety. I just know that the man who brought us here doesn’t even see the chasm up ahead, and he’s got his pedal to the metal. We need someone who knows where the brake is. We can't stop on a dime, but we've got to end this somehow. Because Bush's plans have led to chaos in Iraq, neglect in Afghanistan and misery at home.

Rob

Turtle &%#&!-in' Good!

This is one of the funniest things I've ever seen on the Daily Show. Enjoy.

(I can't link directly. Click on the link that says "Daily Show Video -- Cooter Festival" on the right. You'll be happy you did.)

Rob

Okay, really: New Favorite Band

Jim's Big Ego is a helluva band. Fizzy pop with a great sense of humor, plus the do a song about the Flash! What's not to like?

But instead of directing you to The Ballad of Barry Allen, you should check out this flash video for "Little Miss Communication." Guarantee you'll be humming it after a listen or two.

Give a few more things a listen -- I recommend Stress, Math Prof Rock Star, and Mix Tape. I'm not sure if they're on Radio JBE, but if not, you'll find other good stuff.

Rob

New Favorite Band

I heard about these guys at work today. A little death-metal band called Hatebeak. Check 'em out.

Imperial March

Okay, I was going to write something about my thoughts on the war, and what will come from it, which was extremely depressing, and believe me, you would have found it depressing too. But instead, I just brought Kathy down with it. Sucks for her, but you get to be happy for another day.

Instead, I’ll talk about my morning radio experience. I was listening to this piece about film restoration, and how there’s no decent original print of Star Wars because so many prints were made from it. While they talked about this, they played the Darth Vader music: Dum, dum, dum, dum Da-dum, dum Da-dum…

… and I thought of Dick Cheney.

And not even in the context of a comparison to Darth Vader. That’s already too internalized. It was like they were playing Dick Cheney’s theme, which made me think of Darth Vader, if that makes any sense.

So I guess they’ve even ruined Star Wars for me. At least, the part that George Lucas hadn’t already.

Rob

Congratulations....

... to the Fightin' 69th Posting Pesterers on a job well done.

Stealing, Liberally

I wanted to get a little blogging done today, but I’m pretty swamped (and sweet potatoes are currently in the steamer, so I have to be quick). But when in doubt, steal. Here are some thought on the current campaign, and the Bush Administrations performance, that you may not have read. Presented in easy-to-read list form!

But please, click on the links to read the whole stories.

First up, William Rivers Pitt offers this list of things that are going unnoticed in the rush to say who was (and wasn’t) doing what 30 years ago:

Issues we are not hearing about because we have spent so much time talking about television advertisements:

· Millions of jobs lost in the last four years;

· Unbearably expensive health care;

· A total loss of confidence within the international community in our moral leadership;

· The underfunded farce that is the Department of Homeland Security;

· The underfunded farce that is the No Child Left Behind bill;

· The fact that military assault weapons will soon be making a perfectly legal return to a neighborhood near you;

· The deeply illegal outing of a deep-cover CIA agent by Bush administration officials, who did it because they wanted to silence a critic;

· The rape and torture of men, women and children in the Abu Ghraib prison, horrors that were sanctioned in writing by Bush's own lawyer and the Secretary of Defense;

· The allegation by Senator Bob Graham of Florida that Bush torpedoed any aspect of the 9/11 investigation that came within spitting distance of his friends in the Saudi royal family;

· The allegations by several generals that Bush's people started stripping necessary troops and resources from Afghanistan to bolster their ill-conceived charge into Iraq;

· The myriad accusations by a dozen insiders that Bush and his people ignored the terror threat until the Towers fell, and then used the attacks to scare the American people into an unnecessary war in Iraq and a mammoth payday for their friends in the weapons and oil business;

· The fact that no weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq;

· The fact that no connections between Hussein, bin Laden and 9/11 have been established beyond the bloviating hyperbole of a few senior Bush officials who haven't yet gotten the memo;

· Does anyone even remember Enron?

Tomorrow is the third anniversary of September 11th. We deserve better than this.

Then, Eric Alterman provides these insights, as he remembers Sept. 11th.

Even so vociferous a critic of the unelected Bush, Cheney, the Neocons, and the religious right as myself could not bring himself to imagine in that horrific week with the smell of the smoking ruins literally polluting the sky above my house, that America’s president, its vice-president and their advisers would be capable of the following:

· Bush and company specifically ignored multiple warnings of just such an attack.

· Bush and company lied to the heroes of 9/11 about the health and safety implications of breathing the air down at Ground Zero—my own family included.

· Bush and company immediately sought to manipulate the grief and anger of the attacks to launch an unnecessary and counterproductive war against Iraq which has resulted in over a thousand needless American military deaths and U.S. soldiers turning into occupiers and in some case torturers.

· Bush and company lied to the nation about the responsibility for the attack, trying to pin it on Saddam Hussein who had nothing whatsoever to do with it.

· Bush and company allowed its friends in the Saudi royal family to hide its relationship to the killers. Bush and company made only a lackluster effort to capture the killers, allowing many to escape at
Tora Bora and pulling agents and resources out of Afghanistan to feed its obsession with Iraq.

· Bush and company did everything they could to prevent and later, undermine an investigation of why 9/11 was allowed to happen.

· Bush and company continue to ignore their responsibility to protect the nation from another attack, failing to protect its ports, nuclear and chemical plants, and its most vulnerable urban targets and instead, have actually gone out of their way to inspire more such attacks, despite intelligence warnings on this very topic.

· Bush and company have destroyed the sympathy our nation enjoyed (and deserved) in the immediate aftermath of the attack and have instead turned that sympathy into global hatred and disgust, further endangering our citizens.

· Bush and company have repeatedly manipulated the powerful imagery of the attacks for their own partisan political purposes.

Bush and company have repeatedly cowed the media into ignoring, and when that’s impossible, apologizing for, much of the above. For all of the above, the men and women who people this administration deserved not merely to be repudiated politically but held accountable both morally and legally. Instead it is they who attack and impugn patriots like lifetime public servants Richard Clarke and Anthony Zinni, whose only crimes were to call them honestly to account for their catastrophic dishonesty, incompetence, and ideological fanaticism. Since September 11, President Bush and company have accomplished what the terrorists could not; they have divided us against ourselves.

They've said it more eloquently than I could. Besides, lists can keep you focused.

Rob

Work it!

So Kathy & I joined the Y yesterday. Gonna get all buff and what-not. But, after taking a tour of the fitness center, I noticed there's one piece of equipment they didn't have.

Luckily, there's a phony infomercial I can order it from. As a bonus, it even has the lovely and talented Sarah Silverman!

Rob

City of Miracles

So this morning, as I was walking to work, I see this skinny guy hunker down like a sumo wrestler, facing this woman who’s trying to cross the street. He shifts his weight from foot to foot, then walks away, shouting “Why’s everyone gotta be starin’ at me?”

Outrageous, and the highlight of my morning.

On the exact same corner, walking to the train after an exhausting day putting the magazine to bed, I see what may have been the world’s homeliest transvestite. Mop of curly blonde hair like Robert Plant over a chiseled, fortyish face with lipstick and eyeliner. A loose blue shirt with what looked like boobs underneath, positioned on a torso balanced on manly man-hips.

And suddenly, I was grinning like a baby. Like a kid who had never seen any of this before. Everything was new.

I’m walking down 32nd Street, noticing the bald guy in the headphones and the too-chubby girl in the low-rider jeans and belly tee, and thinking that look HAS to be working for someone, some guy is finding it attractive on her, because otherwise she wouldn’t be wearing it. And there are a hundred different languages yammering on in the city, and a million different thoughts all running through our heads like stock market ticker-tape.

Anyone who tries to convince you that we’re all the same is full of it. We’re all different, we’re gloriously unpredictable, every one of us a freak and a hero.

So go for it.

New Mission

Like I said a while ago, Greg has a blog. Problem is, he's been doing jack with it. One very nice post about roller coasters, and that's it. Granted, I haven't written about the Folk Fest yet (Taj Mahal is the coolest person in whatever state he's in, and you can bet his range is even wider with those red shoes on!), but this isn't about me. This is about the new mission. This is about flooding Greg's site with comments until he knuckes under and gives us another damn post.

I've already double-posted, and I'm gonna keep doing it until he listens. So if you have a minute, drop him a line. Even if you don't know him. Tell him he must post more! There ain't a lot of us, but we might be able to make quite a racket inside his skull. (The echoes, don't ya know...)

Because, really, I need to be shamed into posting more myself. And if Greg keeps it going, I'm sure I can do the same.

Rob

News

Yesterday, Kathy & I went to see the newest addition to our family: Thomas James Burke, My sister and her husband's second son. Coincidentally, it was also the birthday party of their oldest, the ever-adorable two-year-old Daniel, who now says "karate" with glee. (I'm going to teach Tommy to say "tae kwon do." Or "Godzilla.")

Anyway, here are the stats: He was born Sept. 2 at such and such a time (I think around 10:30 at night). Tommy (not TJ -- never TJ unless you want the wrath of my sister, and I can assure you you don't want that) weighed 8.2 pounds and was 22 inches long upon his entrance into the world. Like his brother, he's a cutie. Unlike his brother, he'll probably lose patience with being compared to his brother very quickly. With the assortment of Toms running around in our fam, it's tough to say who he was named for, although James is for Brian's dad. Tom Selleck, maybe? This is another good guess.

Children, behave.

Rob

Fest!

Goin' to the Philly Folk Fest. You should, too. I'll be back someday. Right now I'm off to dump the milk before it goes bad.

Hey Everybody!

Greg's got a blog. It's here.

Go.

The Strangest Movies in the World

I just saw the strangest movie I’m likely to see this year. It’s a film by Guy Maddin called Cowards Bend the Knee, and it’s playing at the Film Forum now. If you see it, it will be the weirdest movie YOU’LL see all year.

Cowards is shot like an old crank nickelodeon peep-show – it was originally meant to be viewed through peepholes at an installation; consequently, it’s been split into 10 different chapters. It’s in jumpy, weathered black and white, and all the dialogue is done on cards, like a silent movie.

The story concerns a young hockey player named Guy Maddin (but played by someone else), so it may be a bit autobiographical. But just a bit. After all, any movie with captions like “Guy tries to stop the ghost from having an abortion” can’t be completely fact-based, can it?

Essentially, Guy is drawn away from his girlfriend Veronica while she’s on the operating table in the back of a bordello. (Well, hair-stylist by day, bordello by night. Back-alley abortions any old time, it seems.) There, he falls in love with the madam’s daughter Meta, who – as they frolick on a mound of hockey gloves, convinces him to kill her mother and her boyfriend, Guy’s close friend Skippy. She wants revenge because THEY killed her father and chopped off his hands.

She has the hands. They’ve been dyed blue with hair styling chemicals (Skippy had thrown them under the sink), but they’ve been preserved in a jar. And…

Meta drugs Guy, and tells the doctor to give him an involuntary hand transplant. Unbeknownst to anyone, he simply paints Guy’s hands blue, and calls it a day. Guy, thinking his “new” hands want revenge, goes on a killing spree. And, in one odd shower scene, a butt-buzzing spree. Don’t ask – I’m not even sure I could explain.

There are plenty of other odd things in the film, and you can discover them for yourself. There’s also plenty of nudity, some of it startling– it is a peepshow after all.

Then again, this may not be the strangest film I’ve seen, since right beforehand were three shorts, two by Madden and one by the Quay Brothers. The Quay Brothers’ "Phantom Museum” is the most unsettling of the bunch – it’s a wordless tour through a museum of medical instruments. Parts of it are quite haunting.

The Madden shorts are silly, disconcerting fun. In “Sombra Delarosa,” a mother must wrestle death – “El Muerto!” in a mexican wrestling ring to prevent her daughter from committing suicide after her husband dies. And then there’s “Sissy-Boy Slap Party.” The name really does say it all – but it still has to be seen to be believed.

It really does.

Rob
(“I turn my back for five minutes, and there you go—slappin’ each other!”)

Indy Comics

This started out as a post I intended to add to a thread at the Pulse about independent comics, but I decided to put it here, instead, where hardly anyone will see it. (I guess I'll post it over there, too.)

I read a fair bit (and a wide variety) of independent comics – Berlin, Age of Bronze, Optic Nerve, Colonia, Girl Genius, among others – but there are plenty of books that I don’t read. And so, while this question isn’t really aimed at me, I thought I’d take a moment to think about what keeps me from reading Indy books I might otherwise like.

1) Don’t even bother with superheroes. I might pick an indy superhero book up on a lark, but look at who you’re competing with. DC 7 Marvel have huge marketing power, and they’ve already got my interest in their respective universes. If I’ve got extra superhero money to spend, 19 out of 20 times it’ll go to a big-two comic I’ve heard good things about. But if I want a Western, space opera, slice of life drama, historical fiction, romantic comedy, where do I turn? Independents, that’s where. And don’t bother putting a cape on it. Give it to me straight.

2) As a corollary to that, I’m sure there are exceptions that prove the rule, but superheroes ain’t superheroes in black and white. I’m willing to read just about anything else in b/w, but if I’m reading superheroes, I want to know what color the costumes are.

3) Poor lettering. There’s plenty of computer lettering fonts available now, so there’s really no excuse for bad lettering in a book. (No need to get to fancy, though—make it EASY to read, rather than pretty to read.) But balloon placement is also part of lettering, and there’s no program that’ll help you with that. If you don’t have a good idea of how the eye flows across a page, I won’t trust you to tell me a compelling story. Because NO story is compelling when you’re trying to figure out what word goes where.

4) If I see a typo on the page or two I pick up to read in the store, I’ll think you don’t care enough about your product. So why should I?

5) Subject matter. I’m sick of elves and vampires and shadowy government conspiracies. Plenty of people aren’t, and I’m not saying you won’t make money – you just won’t get MY money.

So what are ways that an indy comic can get my dough?

6) Trade paperbacks. If I don’t know your work, a trade paperback will make me take it more seriously. It’ll make me think you have staying power. Hopefully, you do.

7) If you’ve got an introduction by an author I like in your trade paperback, I’m more likely to give it a look. Depending on the writer, it’s almost as good as a recommendation from a friend.

8) Make your first issue satisfying. If it’s all setup for part two, it’s wasted time, because I’m never going to read part two unless you knocked my socks off. And you can’t count on that – I wear tight socks. It doesn’t have to be a complete story, but it does have to be a satisfying chunk.

9) Give me suspense. That’s the best way to keep me from waiting for a trade – make me curse the wait.

I’ll probably think of more, but that’s what I’ve got now.

Rob

TV Land tells the Future

Mark Evanier has the whole funny story.

Equal Time...

South Knox Bubba posts excerpts from a new book supporting President Bush. Meet the Alabama National Guard Mail Room Veterans. Their recollections of the President's heroic service (when he showed up) may turn this race around....

Haw!

Out of the mouths of babes. Or doofuses. Or whatever has the equivalent IQ to a baby doofus...

"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we," Bush said.

You're tellin' me...

Rob

VOOFEN! VOOFEN!

Here's a simple site, that is so obviously a labor of love that I just can’t help but love it back. Thank you, anonymous compiler*. And thank you, Don Martin.

Rob
*whom I now know is Doug Gilford. Thanks for the updated link, Doug!

Surreal Moment of the Night…

Okay, Kathy and I took a break from watching a tape of this week’s Amazing Race to check out Kerry’s acceptance speech. Overall, I thought it was pretty good; I liked what he said, and occasionally liked how he said it. (I thought it was well-written for the most part, but I wanted him to take a bit more time with it. In retrospect, though, it was probably smart to get through it by 11.)

But in one of the many cutaways to the audience, who did we see but the man who must’ve written the speech, Toby Ziegler!

Actually, it was Richard Schiff, the man who plays presidential speechwriter Toby Ziegler on The West Wing. But seeing him in a genuine political context made me feel like I’d slipped into another reality for a moment.

 Rob

Proud Uncle News

Kathy & I just got back from our beach vacation, and there's plenty to say about that, but I just learned something that takes precedence.

My nephew Daniel finally accomplished a lifelong dream. (My dream, his lifetime.) He's finally said it, complete with the hand motions:

Karate!

Way to go, big man. That's huge.

Uncle Rob
 
 

Bloodhound
 
Just read what looks like it could be a really cool comic from DC. It’s called Bloodhound, and it seems to be about a normal-powered tough-guy ex-cop who chases down supercriminals. When I say “tough guy,” I mean in the Charles Bronson, Clint Eastwood mold – the kind of cop who’ll go outside of the system to see justice served.
 
Of course, I don’t think Charlie or Clint ever went so far as to kill their own partners. But then, they were probably just a week away from retirement anyhow, and didn’t need killin’. Issue one starts with our guy in prison, being offered a deal to mitigate his sentence in exchange for helping the FBI. Then a prison riot breaks out, orchestrated so the inmates can kill him before he leaves. Really, if you want to see Cobra or The Dead Pool in comics, I think this is your chance.
 
I picked up Bloodhound as a lark, but I’m really happy with how good it is. It’s written by Dan Jolley, with art by Leonard Kirk and Robin Riggs, using a much grittier style than they displayed on Supergirl.

 Rob

Volunteers of America…
 
The other day there were a couple of women standing at my train station with clipboards, asking “Do you want to get George Bush out of the White House?” Well, I really want to get him out of the country, but I stopped anyway. They were from the Democratic National Committee, and were collecting money to fund voter registration drives. They were really friendly, and I gave them some money. I saw other people stopping, too. Mostly I was just glad these volunteers were out there, fightin’ the fight.

Rob

Their server can barely take the strain of the twelve of us, but check this animation out if you haven't seen it yet. (And until you go, how do you KNOW you haven't seen it yet???)

Furious @ George

Bear with me. I’m furious.

Newsweek has reported that the Bush administration is exploring the possibility of postponing the national elections. I’ve heard various shades of justification for this as an option – for instance, if there’s an attack on election day, or (more sinister by far), as a reaction to an attack before election day, to prevent terrorists from “influencing” the election (“like they did in Madrid,” as the familiar and off-key Republican refrain goes). Since the campaign is shaping up to be all about terrorism and our reaction to it, doesn’t it occur to anyone that they’ve already influenced the election, and the next half-dozen along with it?

As much as I hate to admit it, a contingency plan for the first possibility is a good idea. If an attack on the scale of 9/11 happens, it will certainly skew (and drastically suppress) voter turnout. But otherwise?

I admit, another terrorist attack on U.S. soil could influence the election. And SHOULDN’T it? If Bush and his cronies can’t protect us, shouldn’t we be kicking their asses out? What about if they capture Osama bin Laden on October 25? Would they postpone the vote because that would influence the election? Get real.

Whatever happened to "if we change our lifestyle at all, the terrorists have already won?" Does that just apply to shopping and gassing up our SUVs?

Look, we’ve all heard about emerging democracies that either have an election every few months or keep postponing elections for years. Neither situation is desirable, and neither is the sign of a mature government. If the party in power can keep changing the rules, it will stay in power, barring a violent overthrow of the government – the very thing that our voting makes unnecessary. But I listen to these news reports of these countries, and I chuckle a sad little laugh, knowing that whatever the faults of our system, that crap doesn’t happen here.

Except now it may. Thank you, George W. Bush, for bringing us to the Third World. Welcome to fucking Paraguay, you dimwit.

Look, every eye will be (or should be) on the Bushies this November because of their dirty tricks in Florida and elsewhere in 2000. And any movement on the date when we’re not smack-dab in the midst of a national crisis (other than the Bush presidency itself, that is) will be viewed with the utmost scrutiny. You’d think that an administration with such tenuous legitimacy would avoid any hint of taint. But it looks like that’s not how it’s gonna be.

Let’s put it this way: if someone drops the big one on election day, survivors will be able to see my charred shadow on the walls, proudly going to the voting booth to serve this moron with his walking papers, so he can scuttle back under whatever Connecticut fridge he crawled out from under in the first place.

Rob

(like I said, furious)

Cidade De Deus

Kathy & I saw City of God last night. It’s a Brazilian film about street gangs in Rio de Janeiro, and it’s absolutely masterful. If you like Goodfellas, rent this puppy. It’s a visual treat, and the story absolutely won’t disappoint. It’s set in the “City of God,” the name for a slum in Rio where the poor are shunted to keep the main city safe for tourism and business. The plot focuses on a young guy who wants to be a photographer, but is inevitably linked with the various street gangs and factions in the slum. He’s surrounded by numerous hoods and very few heroes, and the film allows you to take in each of them and their own stories. The movie is fresh, the filmmaking is dazzling and kinetic and will make you feel good about style without sacrificing one iota of substance.

Don't believe me? Here's what Roger Ebert had to say. From what I recall, he also called it one of the 10 best films of 2002.

The director, Fernando Meirelles, is now directing The Constant Gardener, a John LeCarre thriller starring Ralph Fiennes. This is your chance to know him when.

Rob

Spins a web, any size...

I have to admit, this is pretty Amazing. One might even say Spectacular.

Kiko-PUNCH!

I just had some excellent teriaki chicken for dinner, and I figure SOME of you haven't seen this. And those who have might like to see it again.

Enjoy.

Rob

Adventures in Moving

So we’re in. The house is ours, after a few hiccups in the closing – this was only the third real estate deal the sellers’ lawyer had ever handled, and our attorney found plenty of mistakes in the deed and kept sending it back for correction. He told us “It was like they’d never done a deed before.” So remember, when you hire a professional, be sure they’ve done the deed.

Consequently, although we did all the signing we needed to do, the deed wasn’t actually ready until the next day. But the sellers gave us the keys beforehand, and we had even already moved some of our stuff into the house, so all was well, if not yet legal. So, to break the month-long tension, we went out to see Dodgeball, and laughed a helluva lot. “If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball!” is my new motto.

We moved the next day, on Tuesday. At 10, we drove to a service station to pick up our U-Haul, and discovered that the guy who handles the truck rentals wasn’t in yet, and could we come back in an hour or so. Luckily, our movers weren’t due until one, so we had a little time.

We went home, fiddled around with some stuff, and came back for the truck. Kathy drove it, and it was in dire straits. The check engine/gauges lights were on and beeping to get her attention, it was leaking antifreeze and low on oil. Once we got it back to the apartment, Kathy called U-Haul and they sent out a guy to look at it, who showed up an hour or so later, when the truck was half-full. Luckily, he was able to change the oil, see that the battery was charging properly (in spite of what the gauges said), and so forth. I asked him if it could go 50 miles or so, and he said sure. After that, it was U-Haul’s problem, and I was fine with that.

(By the way – the service guy said he gets a LOT of emergency calls for U-Haul trucks. He said they run their trucks into the ground. He uses Penske when he moves, since their trucks are in much better shape.)

The three guys we hired from Cranston moving were crackerjack. We had a ton of stuff (actually, that’s certainly an understatement), and they fit it all into the 24-foot truck we’d rented. They used every inch of space, accommodating my comics, thons of boxes of who knows what, and a bunch of furniture. I don’t think there was any air left in the first half of the cargo hold, things were packed so tightly.

My mom and my brother Jim were here at the house to help unload and to see the house, and they were a big help. Soon after the unloading was done, Kathy’s mom came by, as did her sisters, brother-in-law, and assorted nephews and niece. Exhausted as we were, it was good to see them. Once they left, we hustled over to a local diner to eat – our first food since before going to get the truck the first time.

Since then, it’s been unpacking and cleaning and what-have-you. I’m trying to focus on the what-have-you, but there’s a lot of other stuff to be done.

Phew!

Just remember: If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball.

Rob

Celebrating Independence Day

What better way to do it than to lock up protestors? I know! Lock up folks for wearing T-shirts!

From the AP:

Two Bush opponents, taken out of the crowd in restraints by police, said they were told they couldn't be there because they were wearing shirts that said they opposed the president.

Are restraints really necessary? Did they check other protestors for anti-bush boxers or push-up bras? Who knows what sentiments people were concealing!

Thanks to Atrios for the link.

Rob