Wake Me Up When September Ends

I realize I've been awfully effusive lately when it comes to gratitude, but I really feel like it's important that I say a quick thanks to everybody who's read this site over the past few weeks.

September was a huge month around these parts, both in terms of traffic (the biggest numbers Deus Ex Malcontent has pulled down since the news of my dismissal from CNN first broke) and content (the most posts I've cranked out in a single month).

It's been damn rewarding to put so much effort into this site and have it be noticed by you nice folks.

So, once again, thanks.

Greek Theater

Since starting this little experiment of mine, I've met a lot of really nice people whom I've never actually met -- readers who write to me often and to whom I write back. They're more than just virtual friends; they sometimes feel like family simply because they've read my stuff long enough to where they can tell when something's wrong and are always there to lend a kind word.

One of my favorite "blogger" friends is Nancy -- a self-proclaimed "sixtyish wife, mother, grandmother, Lutheran, thinker and quilter" who lives just outside Philly. Nancy's not only a sweetheart of the highest order, she's one of the sharpest ladies I've come across in a very long time -- a damn good writer who knows how to put what she's thinking into words in a way that's economical and to the point (as opposed to the way I write, which is verbose, meandering and occasionally just plain obnoxious).

Nancy's latest post is a pre-cursor to Thursday night's vice presidential debate and manages to hit the problem with Sarah Palin right on the head.

(Nancy, Blogging Near Philadelphia: Greek?/9.30.08)

I (Heart) John McCain

Goddamn, the only thing they left out is Ann threatening to eat him.

(Update: Yes, it's fake. But still damn funny.)

...Get a Stupid Answer

It was really only a matter of time before somebody came up with something like this:

The "Interview Sarah Palin" Answer Generator

This is the answer I got to the question, "What is the role of the U.S. in Iraq and Afghanistan?"

"Iraq and Afghanistan will lead to further security of our economy. It is, somebody was saying this morning, a toxic waste there on Wall Street. Well, it certainly does because our our next door neighbors are foreign countries. They're in the oversight that has shown his foresight, his pragmatism, and his leadership abilities. And that contract that should be inherent in corporations who are extreme, and they do not have to keep. I do bring to this table, and that's the beauty of American elections, of course, that is strong and that important an issue like this also. And I asked President Karzai, 'Is that what President Bush has attempted to do this with you?'"

Part of the Problem

I continued to work in television news long after coming to the conclusion that the industry was badly broken -- I admit that. But I didn't enter into it believing that it was a colossal mess, otherwise, why would I have bothered? I eventually became frustrated with the direction TV news had taken, but I never thought the medium as a whole should be done away with.

The same can't be said for many of today's Republicans; for the life of me I'll never understand how they manage to sell the public on the idea that they have a starring role in a production they utterly despise as a matter of principle. Worse than Ivy League oligarchs like George Bush and Grover Norquist casting themselves as heroes of the common man are class-act bullshit artists like John Boehner and Roy Blunt, who play along and continue to invoke the supposedly hallowed legacy of Ronald Reagan by asserting that government in and of itself is a bad thing. These self-loathing lawmakers claim to despise our government -- not simply the way it operates but, really, its very existence -- and yet they strive to be elected and re-elected to positions within it.

A good rule of thumb: When you're trying to make a business work, you don't hire employees who hate what it is that you do and believe that the less of it there is, the better.

Is it any wonder why things are so screwed up?

Read on:

(The Huffington Post: "Does McCain Still Agree with Reagan that Government is the Problem?" by Arianna Huffington/9.29.08)

Interlude

Tuesday is Recycling Day

"Things to Do in Texas When You're Dead" (Originally Published, 8.25.06)

By the time you read this, Justin Fuller will be dead.

Wednesday, 8:43am

There's a specific mathematical equation which can be used to help understand why Houston is arguably the most God-awful place on Earth. It all comes down to the numbers: the fifth-worst traffic in the country, plus the second-worst air-quality, minus the constant 72-degree temperature which makes Los Angeles livable despite such problems, multiplied by the number of Texans equals, well, Hell.

A few minutes ago I purposely ignored the flight attendant's request that I switch off all portable electronic devices, choosing instead to continue listening to Black Rebel Motorcycle Club's Howl album blasted at full-volume through my iPod. Anything to make descending through a layer of shit-brown haze slightly less depressing.

I'm now standing in baggage claim with my photographer. We've unloaded six pieces of luggage filled with heavy camera equipment and are currently engaged in a harried conversation with an employee of Continental Airlines. This employee's sole reason for existence over the next few hours will be to find a seventh piece of luggage which has apparently vanished into thin air somewhere between Laguardia and George Bush Intercontinental Airport.

That's my first impression of Houston this morning: lost luggage, an airport named after the man whose sperm mutated into George W. Bush, and a sign I'm leaning against which bears a likeness of the Houston Police Department seal. It reads, "Order Through Law. Justice With Mercy."

How reassuring.

I can't leave this place quickly enough.

Wednesday, 9:52am

Fortunately, the wayward bag didn't contain any vital piece of camera equipment; unfortunately it did contain a vital pair of shoes -- which is why we're now parked outside of a Wal-Mart along Route 59 North. My anchor and I sit in the Jeep Grand Cherokee which the network has been kind enough to rent for us; I'm in the driver's seat, she's next to me. We're discussing the pros, cons and innate weirdness of going to your twenty-year high school reunion. Apparently at hers, she and her husband shared a table with a couple that argued the entire evening; he was a farmer, she was a stay-at-home mom. Eventually, after several drinks, the farmer threatened violence against his timid wife and was forcibly removed from the table.

My anchor has just unknowingly convinced me to attend my own reunion next year.

At some point, the other producer travelling with us on this little adventure comes running out of the front of the monolithic Wal-Mart -- bag in hand. When she throws open the back door of the SUV, my anchor and I giddily ask to see her purchase. She shows us the shoes she just bought -- which are about as impressive as you'd expect a pair of shoes bought at a Texas Wal-Mart to be, which is to say, not at all. They aren't open-toed however, which means that they meet the stated requirement for entry into the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Polunsky Unit's Death Row area. Why anyone's choice of footware would be a sticking point, I'm not quite sure. I'm not willing to argue the point however, given that I've already had nightmares in which today's shoot turns into the last half-hour of Natural Born Killers. Best to get on the guards' good sides right off the bat.

The producer slips off the flip-flops she wore on the plane and slides on the new Wal-Mart specials.

Wednesday, 10:07am

Continuing north on Route 59, we pass another Wal-Mart; this one is a Supercenter.

Wednesday, 10:15am

My anchor says she's hungry, so we pull over to a combination Chevron Station/Subway on the side of the road. The fact that myself, the other producer, our anchor and photographer have all chosen to wear black shirts for today's shoot -- a decision made without a hint of pre-planning or irony -- doesn't go unnoticed by the locals, many of whom resemble the road crew of Monster Magnet. They look at us like we're A) lost B) gay C) from New York, or D) all of the above. I'm the last in line to order and the rest of my crew is already out the door when I look next to the cash register and notice a plexiglass box containing small bottles stacked neatly in rows. I recognize them immediately: Mini-thins -- illegal in most states because they contain ephedrine, which has been known to occasionally thin the herd of stupid high school kids by stopping their hearts. They're often found in convenience stores because they conveniently keep truckers awake during extended runs. They've been at my side through every cross-country drive I've ever made.

I'm smiling as I hand the cashier a ten, toss one of the little bottles into my Subway bag and walk out the door -- carefully sidestepping the display of Git-R-Done bumper stickers on my way -- and into the humid Texas air.

Wednesday, 10:26am

We pass another Wal-Mart Supercenter.

Wednesday, 10:35am

As Route 59 narrows into a four-lane stretch of road, we pass a small, yellow building on the right. Emblazoned on the front of it is a sign that reads, Joy Juice Liquors.

I spit Dr. Pepper all over the steering wheel.

Wednesday, 10:43am

Up ahead of us on the side of the road is a large white tent. As the SUV approaches it and pulls parallel, we each stare silently; it's a massive display of swords, daggers and medieval-looking axes. There must be hundreds of them. Stretched across the top of the tent is a banner; it's succinct in its pronouncement: Swords!

As we glide past, I turn to my anchor. "Hey, you never know," I say blankly.

Wednesday, 11:06am

From the outside, the Polunsky Unit in Livingston, Texas looks about as you'd expect. It's a complex of ugly, two-story buildings surrounded by high fences topped with razor-wire that gleams in the oppressive, unobstructed sunlight. It sits in the middle of a barren field which is constantly patrolled by corrections officers in trucks, on ATVs and on horseback. At each corner of the complex is a tower; walking the landing of each tower is a guard armed with a Remington 11-87 combat shotgun and wearing the obligatory mirrored aviator sunglasses.

As we approach the guard gate -- which isn't a gate at all so much as a checkpoint -- a corrections officer tears himself away from a cooler of water that sits on top of a picnic table next to the road. He walks slowly around the front of our Jeep Cherokee. Before we even roll down the window, we go ahead and get it out of the way.

"What we got here is -- failure to communicate," comes a disembodied voice from the backseat; it's my photographer.

"No one can eat fifty eggs," I respond.

We're allowed in without incident and I park in the visitor's lot, next to a dusty red Chevy Geo with the words "Just Married" scrawled across the back window.

Wednesday, 11:17am

The first thing I notice when I enter the lobby -- which acts as a sort of purgatory between the outside world and the interior of the prison -- is the large sign bolted to the steel door on the other side of the metal detectors. It reads in bold letters, HOSTAGES WILL NOT EXIT THROUGH THIS DOOR, which makes me wonder if it's ever their decision which door they'll exit through.

We're met by a female corrections officer who bears a striking resemblance to Food Network host Paula Deen, right down to the comforting Southern drawl. Translation: she in no way looks like she belongs within ten miles of a place where some of the most dangerous men in the United States are at that very moment forcing the new guy to perform oral sex on them. She leads us through the metal detector and runs down the checklist: no cell phones or Blackberries, no paper money, no pens or pencils, no cigarettes (as they can be traded for contraband), no sunglasses (as they can be traded for good contraband), no gloves (as they can be used to climb the fence), and of course -- no weapons (which suddenly makes me glad we didn't stop at Earl's Fabulous House of Swords).

Once we're given our visitors' passes, we're introduced to a young woman whose intention is to sell us Avon, or maybe recruit us for Junior League, or perhaps take us to a sorority mixer.

This is my first impression upon meeting her anyway.

The media liason for the Polunsky Unit's Death Row is the kind of girl that folks around these parts no doubt describe as "Cute as a Button." She's an attractive brunette in her mid-20s with a perfect complexion and -- for some reason I can't possibly fathom -- a smile that you likely couldn't remove from her face with a crowbar. Quite simply -- like Guard Paula Deen -- she's the last person anyone would expect to willingly spend her days surrounded by guys who are about to be executed. She seems more like a cruise director than someone who works for the Department of Criminal Justice.

After a few minutes of small-talk, which only adds to the palpable surreality, we're escorted into the prison yard via the large steel door -- the one hostages will not be exiting through.

On our way across the yard, Julie Your Cruise Director points to a nearly-windowless building that looks as if it's been flattened with a giant steam iron.

"That's Death Row. It's actually kind of a nice building," she exclaims.

I don't even know how to respond.

Wednesday, 11:36am

A few minutes ago, I and my crew were led into the visitors' wing which is attached to Death Row. Now that I'm looking around, the entire area reminds me of my elementary school -- right down to the bizarrely encouraging affirmations painted on the walls. "Remember, Safety is Priority One!" proclaims one. "Welcome to the Polunsky Unit!" screams another. There are picnic tables outside. There are vending machines against the far wall. I find myself looking around for a shuffle-board court.

In the room the inmates come and go, talking of life on Death Row.

As my photographer finishes setting up for our shoot, I walk slowly toward the partitioned glass booths in the center of the room. The front of the booths face outward, but the back is attached to a long hallway which leads directly to and from the Death Row cell block. The prisoners are never brought into the part of the room I'm standing in; they're simply shuffled into the hallway then dumped into one of these booths. It's like a macabre peep-show -- complete with a telephone. It's only when I look up that I notice that the subject of our interview -- the person we came all this way to see -- is already in his assigned booth; he's directly in front of me.

When our eyes meet, we exchange a cordial smile.

This is Justin Fuller.

In 1997, Justin Chaz Fuller -- at that time an 18-year-old recent high school graduate -- participated in the kidnapping and murder of an acquaintance. 21-year-old Donald Whittington was taken from his apartment in Tyler, Texas, driven to an ATM where he was forced to take out $300, then to an area near Lake Tyler where he was shot in the head. Witnesses say in the days following the murder, Fuller led them to the body and bragged about shooting Whittington. Three other people participated in the crime and during the trial Fuller insisted that although he took part in the kidnapping, he wasn't the triggerman. He expressed sorrow to the victim's family for his role in their loved one's death, but he's always insisted that he can't apologize for something he didn't do -- and he says he did not shoot Whittington.

Fuller has a baby face. In keeping with the confusing, dichotomic nature of everything in this place, he doesn't look like he belongs here. He's soft-spoken and has an easy, almost infectious smile. At one point, he makes eye-contact with one of the guards and both of them begin to laugh, as if sharing an inside joke. I'm not quite sure how he has the ability to be so insouciant, given that he'll be dead in less than thirty-six hours.

Wednesday, 11:55am

Houston, we have a problem.

My photographer has just informed me that his camera isn't working.

As he was hauling it out of the airport in Houston, he accidentally slammed it against the automatic doors. We assumed it was fine. We apparently assumed wrong.

Suddenly I'm no longer waxing philosophical in my mind about the justice system and Justin Fuller's place in it; I'm trying to figure out how to salvage an important and expensive interview -- one which needless to say can't be "rescheduled." In a flash I'm back out into the hot sun and walking quickly across the protected area of the prison yard, out through purgatory and finally out into the parking lot. I'm cursing under my breath and sweating like Oprah on a Stairmaster.

When I get back to the SUV I begin making desperate phone calls to our National Desk. A few minutes later, I'm informed that a freelance photographer is being dispatched to our location and should arrive within the hour. Crisis averted. The power of network news emerges triumphant.

Wednesday, 12:23pm

After another pass through the metal detector accompanied by another kindly smile from Office Paula Deen, I'm once again back in the Death Row visitors' area where I'm met by the other producer. She quickly gives me the thumbs up and informs me that in my absence the camera mysteriously began working properly. The interview is happening right now.

Since I have the phone number of the freelancer in my pocket, I ask Julie Your Cruise Director to borrow her cell phone and place a call to let him know to stand down.

Then I quietly walk over behind the camera, pull up a chair, grab an earpiece and listen.

Wednesday, 12:31pm

Justin Fuller speaks softly and articulately; the effect is hypnotically disarming.

He talks first about his family: his father who coached his youth soccer team; his mother who believed for so long that she had raised him right. He expresses sadness over the fact that tomorrow these ostensibly good people -- these innocent people -- will sit by helplessly and watch their son die. He pauses for a moment as he says this -- exhales softly.

When asked about his crime, he stands by his assertion that he wasn't the one who fired the bullet that killed Donald Whittington. "I was 18. I was stupid," he says when pressed about why he became involved in the crime in the first place. "I was a follower, you know? I should've known better." Still, he believes that his own death won't bring peace to Whittington's family -- that it's simply a case of two terrible wrongs attempting to make an elusive right.

"You can't teach people not to kill by killing people," he says.

As I listen, I find myself wondering about the thought processes behind Fuller's statements. He appears -- for all intents and purposes -- to be a very bright young man, but I can't help wondering how much of his rhetoric is the result of his own personal reflection and how much is simply a series of talking points naturally absorbed into his character after almost ten years of steady repetition by defense lawyers. I pay attention to key words and phrases, unusual terms that seem to stand out in a sea of common language. I pay attention to how often he repeats these terms during the conversation.

He's asked if he understands what's going to happen to him tomorrow -- if he knows the details of the lethal injection process. His response is eerie in its matter-of-factness.

"Yes, Sodium Thiopental will put me to sleep. Pancuronium Bromide will paralyze my muscles -- and then Potassium Chloride will stop my heart and kill me."

That's it. It's that simple. He describes the process that will end his life as if he and the woman sitting across from him were at a table at an intimate restaurant -- and he was placing an order for the two of them.

It's at this point that I begin to wish that the subject of our interview bore more of a resemblance to Hannibal Lecter; that he was someone more cunning and unapologetic -- that he was someone easily dismissable. It's at this point that I begin to wish that Justin Fuller were more of a caricature, and less human.

I remove the earpiece and step over to Julie Your Cruise Director, who's seated several feet away from the camera.

"How do you do this kind of thing?" I ask -- not accusingly, but out of a legitimate desire to understand something which seems incomprehensible.

She looks at me and, with a smile that adds a jarring irony to her words, says offhandedly, "I drink -- a lot."

Every Wednesday, she's here helping men make their final statements to the world.

Every Thursday, she watches those same men die. She attends every execution held here.

Wednesday, 1:16pm

We thank Justin Fuller for his time, which at this point is something I'd imagine is quite precious to him. He remains in the caged booth -- behind the thick glass -- as we begin tearing down our equipment.

I'm staring out of the window onto the prison yard, trying to push myriad thoughts out of my head: the strangeness of a place where death is literally doled out on an assembly line; the questionable equity of a justice system which seems to arbitrarily condemn one murderer to die while allowing others to live; the possibility that lethal injection isn't so much a humane method of execution for the benefit of the condemned as it is a means to make us feel better about the process -- to help us sleep at night, as well as a means to make us feel superior to the condemned, who may have killed without such supposed humanity.

This reverie is suddenly broken by the three words no producer ever wants to hear.

"It didn't record," my photographer says.

I fight the urge to spin around in a panic, choosing instead to simply close my eyes and sigh.

"I figured I got the camera rolling. It looked like everything was alright," he continues.

I motion to Julie Your Cruise Director -- letting her know that I need her phone again.

"You guys gave me a thumbs-up. If I had known that there might still be a problem, I would've gotten the freelancer out here as a back-up."

I don't wait for my photographer to respond. I'm redialing the number for the freelance photographer; after five rings, I hear him pick up.

"How fast can you get here?" I ask him.

Not fast enough.

We're screwed.

Wednesday, 2:03pm

It's been a long time since I've driven. Aside from a recent car rental, I haven't been behind the wheel of a vehicle since I begrudgingly sold my Audi A4 and moved to the land of subways and taxis. Thankfully I've forgotten none of the technique I learned while growing up in Miami and tearing through the streets in an attempt to replicate the driving style of Miami Vice. I'm weaving through traffic at near warp-speed in the hope of quickly reaching a local affiliate station which has graciously agreed to allow us to play back the tape of our interview. My anchor made the arrangement by phone just a few minutes ago. The prayer is that the problem we're having is with the camera's playback setting -- and not with the tape itself. None of us is very hopeful.

The other potential crisis at the moment is that our flight leaves in about two and a half hours, and I'm now about to drive into the center of Houston right at the start of rush hour -- in the rain.

I've got to get out of this business.

Wednesday, 3:07pm

I pull the SUV up and slam it to the curb right outside the affiliate. My crew throws open the doors and runs up the covered steps and into the building. I close my eyes and try to remain calm.

Wednesday, 3:13pm

As they exit the building, I can tell by the looks on their faces that things are not good.

"It's worthless," my anchor says as she climbs into the passenger's seat.

We came all this way for nothing.

Our flight leaves in an hour and a half.

Wednesday, 4:30pm

I have visions of the unparalleled benefits of profiling; it would have to work better than the system the TSA has in place right now at our nation's airports. I wonder how anyone can claim that confiscating water bottles and gel products prior to boarding is in any way keeping Americans safe in the skies. The question I want to ask one of these idiots is simple: "If you knew that liquid explosives were a potential threat -- then why the hell were we ever allowed to bring water on a fucking plane?" As usual, terrorists are thinking ahead, while the people paid to outsmart them have set up a safety net as secure and impenetrable as the space between Bill Buckner's legs.

I'm fidgeting. I'm angry. I'm about to miss my flight.

Wednesday, 4:56pm

Our plane rises through the gruesome haze of pollution spread low across Houston. A moment ago, I stood up slightly and looked around the cabin -- making sure my anchor, my photographer and our other producer made it. They did.

The man seated next to me is reading Bernie Goldberg's 100 People who are Screwing Up America, now expanded to 110 people. I can only assume that Hillary Clinton had ten new children since the publication of the last edition, or maybe Bernie just had ten more mini-strokes which translated into ten more Quixotic rants against liberals, feminists and any other Godless cretins his elderly mind deems offensive.

I lean back and close my eyes.

My iPod is plugged into my head.

The quiet beauty of Mazzy Star's Rhymes of an Hour washes over me.

I want to get Justin Fuller's comfortable smile out of my head.

I want to go home and hold my wife.

Thursday, 6:07pm

The first of three chemicals is pumped into Justin Fuller's body. He's looking at the faces of his mother and father as he drifts off.

Thursday, 6:18pm

Justin Fuller is pronounced dead.

Listening Post

When I was in college, there were two types of people: those who loved Fishbone and those you didn't want to be friends with.

Here they are doing an absolutely mindblowing live version of Sunless Saturday.

Quote of the Week (Early Contender)

"Will someone please put Sarah Palin out of her agony? Is it too much to ask that she come to realize that she wants, in that wonderful phrase in American politics, 'to spend more time with her family'?"

-- Professional Smart Person Fareed Zarakia, who, in deference to Sarah Palin, is from India (a country that can't be seen from either Alaska or Russia)

The Mayor of Simpleton

Well folks, I've finally found it.

I've been looking for years, but here it is: the single fucking dumbest thing ever.

From the Huffington Post:

"Fort Mill, South Carolina Mayor Danny Funderburk said he forwarded a chain email suggesting Barack Obama is the antichrist because he was 'just curious' if it was true.

'I was just curious if there was any validity to it,' Funderburk said in a telephone interview. 'I was trying to get documentation if there was any scripture to back it up.'

I guess leaning over the backyard fence and asking Cletus and Myrna if they'd been told anything about this by Baby Jesus didn't provide the confirmation Mayor "Danny" was looking for.

Just remember, this idiot was probably a pair of tits away from being John McCain's running mate at one point.

In the Red

Last week I reposted a silly little piece I wrote a while back poking fun at CNBC's Erin Burnett (Money Makes the Girls Go Round/9.25.08). Well, the new issue of Vanity Fair features an article which asks "Who Is Wall Street's Queen B?" and which contends that the rivalry between Maria Bartiromo and Erin Burnett is mostly "a male fantasy thing."

Yup, pretty much the most dead-on assertion VF has printed in years (and the above picture from the magazine goes a long way in proving it).

Erin my dear, I'm still waiting to hear from you.

Oh Say Can You See...

On the plus side, if no one actually shows it to her, it's safe to say Sarah Palin will never see this.

Book Report

In ten days I'll be headed to Los Angeles to pimp my book to a couple of interested parties, as well as make a promotional appearance or two. What will come of this, who knows -- but in the lead-up to my trip, I'm going to do something I haven't really done here before: make a full-on dedicated sales push. Thanks to readers of this site, the chance I took with online publication has been an unqualified success. There's no advertising for Dead Star Twilight -- no official outside promotion of any kind -- and yet through nothing more than your own support, viral internet buzz and some decent word-of-mouth, I've sold more copies of this thing than I ever could've imagined.

I can't thank you enough for everything so many of you have done to promote my book. The positive reaction has just floored me.

But now, for the first time, I'm going to come right out and ask for a little extra help. I'm looking for a sales spike over the next seven days, simply because the more online backing I can take with me to the West Coast, the better.

So if you've been thinking about picking up a copy of Dead Star Twilight and haven't gotten around to it yet, now's the time. Just click the link to the right to download it. If you've already read the book and liked it, then please -- tell your friends. Hell, buy one for them; say Oprah recommends it.

To prime the pump a tiny bit, I'm releasing one last excerpt from the book -- a lengthy and rather brutal one -- which you'll find directly below this post.

More excerpts, plus the unofficial "soundtrack," can be found here:

(Ship of Fools/2.22.08)

(Welcome to the Monkey House/6.4.07)

(The Ex Files/6.7.07)

(Imperfect Strangers/8.30.07)

(With Love and Resentment, Your Past/9.5.07)

(Listening Post: Memoir Edition/1.27.08)

(DST Soundtrack/4.7.08)

We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

No Place Like Home

What follows is an extended excerpt from my memoir, Dead Star Twilight. The events described take place just before Christmas of 2000. By this time, I was well into a very serious heroin addiction and had hoped that a two-week vacation with my wife (now ex-wife) would provide a kind of forced detox -- the first step in kicking my dangerously escalating habit. If this sounds like a really stupid plan -- it was.

It’s almost 2pm on a Friday afternoon, and Kara and I are sitting at LAX waiting to board a flight which will take us to Miami, the first stop on an almost two-week-long holiday season tour. The plan is to hit both our parents’ homes, dividing our time equally between her family and mine. There will be extended relatives. There will be Christmas parties. There will be Kara’s first time meeting her newborn niece. There will be the requisite holiday cheer. And there, in the middle of it all, will be me—withdrawing from heroin.

Pause.

Uh—

Wait a minute.

Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.

My eyes widen and my hands start to shake as the sheer impact of this ill-conceived little plan of mine finally hits me in the chest like a wrecking ball. It happens as I’m being herded down the jetway and into oblivion—the slow push forward suddenly taking on the finality of the Bataan Death March.

Oh shit.

Oh shit.

Oh motherfucking shit.

I try to conceal my expanding panic by logically sorting out what the next few hours and days will probably have in store for me. Truth be told, I have no idea what detox feels like. The reason for this, of course, is that since my addiction graduated to full-blown, Hendrixian status, I haven’t actually allowed myself to go without drugs long enough to feel the true pain of withdrawal.

What’s to come? I have some idea:

Visions of Trainspotting dance in my head—dead babies crawling across the ceiling.

I hear the voice of Pinhead from the Hellraiser movies telling me that he has such sights to show me.

“You alright?” Kara asks, no doubt noticing that I’ve gone shock-white.
I force a smile. “I’m fine.”

What’s one more lie at this point?



My math has suddenly gotten much better.

A twenty-dollar heroin ball, times three, plus the difference between noon and 10pm, at thirty-five thousand feet equals—one fucked junkie. It’s been ten hours since my last fix—I managed to sneak out and indulge just a couple of hours before boarding the plane—and I’m starting to feel the unmistakable first waves of withdrawal. They’re coming slow and steady—the promise of the suffering ahead hidden with little subtlety just below the surface. I can already feel parts of me being stripped away in layers—my usually pithy attitude, the first of many extraneous luxuries to go. This is brutally serious, and I’m terrified beyond words.

As the minutes pass—as slowly as hours—I can feel my humanity draining, little by little. It’s as if I’m devolving into the animal I would’ve been had I existed millions of years ago. At least that’s how it feels.

My ears are ringing.

My nose is running, rancid mucus sliding down the back of my throat.

I’m beginning to cough loudly—a wet, hacking and guttural sound that probably has the passengers and flight attendants around me wondering if they’re going to leave this flight infected with Ebola. I’m almost sure I saw the guy sitting across the aisle checking me out, looking for monkey bites.

My insides feel like they’re beginning to boil, the hot bubbles now roiling to the surface of my skin and bursting open, releasing scalding hot steam under my sweater.
I can feel the hot sweat turn to ice, just like Sid said.

What’s worse, I know that this is only the beginning.

I close my eyes and for the first time in years—I pray.



By the time we land, it’s just after midnight on the East Coast. I know this because I can still focus my eyes as I look down at my watch—but just barely. My head is listing forward as if someone hit me in the back of the neck with an axe, leaving nothing more than a few ragged pieces of flesh holding my head on. My body runs hot and cold at rapidly alternating intervals, never allowing me to get anywhere near comfortable. My stomach is cramping something awful and it hurts to move. If I were in a condition to analyze anything beyond the primal thought of my own survival, I’d fucking hate myself for letting this happen to me—for letting my addiction come to this. Hopefully, there’ll be time for that later.

As far as I can tell, Kara simply believes I’m getting sick—the way I usually do when I fly. I’m happy to allow her to continue down this seemingly logical path for no other reason than that it requires absolutely no effort from me. Right now I can barely speak through my chattering teeth. I couldn’t argue with her if I tried. At the moment though, she seems less concerned for my well-being than she does about the fact that I’m in no condition to meet either my parents now, or hers should this unfortunate situation last more than a week. Ergo, I’m going to ruin Christmas.

Still, if I don’t think things can get much worse—like I have been about so much lately—I’m completely wrong.

As I drag my dead feet up the incline of the jetway and into the open terminal of Miami International Airport, I spot them: My parents. Only they’re not my parents, at least not the parents I remember from four months ago, which was the last time I saw them before leaving for Los Angeles.

My God, is that all it’s been? Is that all the time it’s taken to bring my life down to this?

The world has changed so dramatically as to render everything completely unrecognizable, and my own sunken face in the mirror these days is not the only evidence of this. The man and woman now standing just a few feet in front of me appear spectral. I only vaguely recognize them as the people who raised me, although in my current condition this may be somewhat of a compliment, given that the parents of my youth seem to have failed miserably at teaching me right from wrong. But there’s something else about them—these two people. There’s something that even in this condition I sense but can’t put my finger on.

“Hi!” my mother exclaims, musically allowing the word to roll off her tongue until it’s split into two syllables—her eyebrows arcing to add emphasis.

She throws her arms around Kara first as a matter of circumstance—she happens to be closest. As she does this I force myself to extend a shaky and cold hand to my father who—in his unflappable way—pulls his own hand slowly from his pocket and returns the greeting. I lean in and attempt to put my other arm around his back in a half-hug, which turns into a near-collapse on my part. I end up grasping him for support, my head resting momentarily on his shoulder.

“Are you alright, son?” he says, practically holding me up.

I feel like I’m literally coming apart, but I’m astonished that in spite of my original fears, I’m managing to mask the pain better than I’d expected. I can’t cover up the cough, the fever, the watery eyes or the bubbling mucus in my nostrils—but at least I’m not howling about how badly I need drugs. That, I’m somehow keeping inside.

“He’s sick. He’s been like that for hours,” Kara says, her tone implying the kind of carefully rehearsed combination of concern and pity that can only come from being raised in the South. This is done strictly for my parents’ benefit.

My mother instantly assumes the obligatory-yet-sincere posture which conveys maternal worry—she also being from the South—and steps over to the sad little dance between her husband and son, the idiot. I feel the back of her hand come to rest on my forehead, and try to ignore the fact that, at the moment, this simple and sweet gesture feels like she’s just taken a hot iron and pressed it into my face.

“Oh honey, you’re burning up.”

No shit.

She turns to Kara. “He always gets sick when he travels,” she says matter-of-factly. I allow myself a moment to wonder why she thinks that the woman I married wouldn’t know such a basic, albeit unfortunate fact about me.

I pull my head up off of my father’s shoulder, noticing the film of sweat and oil left behind on his jacket.

“Sorry,” I manage to mutter. “I’m pretty gross right now.”

Once again, no shit.

“Not a problem. Let’s get you home.”

That’s my dad: All business.

The wife’s suspiciously ear-to-ear smile is blinding, so I turn away from it as we begin the painful trudge through the terminal to baggage claim. I find myself instead scanning the floor in every direction, deliriously on the lookout for wandering goats and chickens, sleeping illegal immigrants, giant bags of cocaine, local politicians being arrested by federal agents or any of the other unusual sights that characterize Miami International as America’s only Third World airport.

“You guys hungry?” my mother asks, with far too much enthusiasm.

Dear Christ, I’m in hell.

All I can manage is a sigh.



Throughout the ride home, the conversation between my wife and my parents is a mish-mash of triviality. How’s work? How’s her family? Are they excited to see us for Christmas? And how have things been back here in Miami? I’m thankfully catching only snippets as I weave in and out of consciousness. I’m fighting the overwhelming urge to moan as loudly as I can. In spite of the dreamlike fugue state that seems to have wrapped itself around my brain and is now squeezing like an anaconda, I’m well aware that it’s taking all of my energy to not move. The flu-like symptoms have given way to something much more frightening: My muscles are now spasming horribly. It’s a searing pain that I’m trying in desperation to relieve by stretching my legs as far as I can in the backseat of my parents’ car—pushing down hard against the floor until it feels like it might split open and I’ll suddenly become a grotesque parody of Fred Flintstone. I’m flexing every muscle in my body, in the hope that the tension and release will somehow wear them out to the point of relaxation. None of this is working. I’m nearly in shock and trying to stop myself from shaking all over.
This is the nightmare scenario that I was afraid of: Withdrawing hard—right in front of my wife and parents. As this thought enters my head like a spike, with my skin steaming and freezing at the same time, lava running through my veins and my muscles and organs liquefying within me, I can’t hold back. I’m only vaguely aware of the sound I’m suddenly making.

“Son, are you alright? Do you need to go to the hospital?”

I look up and see my father’s face staring back at me in the rearview mirror. The sweeps of pink light from the passing street lamps make it appear evil and menacing.

“What?” I try not to look like I want him to kill me.

“You’re moaning—are you alright?”

That’s when I realize that every exhalation of hot, stale breath that escapes my body is accompanied by a small but audible whimper. I gather every ounce of energy and practically spit back through clenched teeth, “No, I’ll be okay. I just really feel awful. I need to get home and get to bed.”

“Well, we’re almost there, honey,” my mother reassures.

I look over at my wife and try to appear remorseful for this unfortunate but wholly accidental turn of events. She just looks pissed.

I close my eyes and wish myself away. Attempt to forget how sorry I am that I didn’t bring just one ball of heroin with me. Or that I wasn’t born somebody else.


What I see when I open my eyes doesn’t in any way bring me back to reality—not that reality’s a place I want to be right now anyway. The effect, in fact, is exactly the opposite. What I’m looking at through the rear passenger window of my parents’ car doesn’t look at all familiar. I’ve never seen it before in my life. It certainly doesn’t register as home.

“We’re here,” my mother says, turning around and looking into the backseat with a little smile.

“We are?” I manage.

That’s when it hits me—the feeling I had at the airport.

With all the inconsequential platitudes being tossed back and forth in the car, the subject of my parents’ “situation” never came up. Despite the fact that I keep in regular contact with them by phone and know the details of what happened to them, it had understandably been pushed out of my mind tonight—until right now.

“This is it, eh?” I ask, barely opening my mouth. I instantly regret sounding so disappointed.

“This is temporary. You should see the place in Sebring,” my mother says.

My eye sockets fill with acid when the dome light in the car comes on. I squeeze my eyelids shut as tightly as I can against the pain. The car jostles as everyone gets out, sending crushing tremors through my racked body. I somehow open the door and pull myself out into the humid night air.

Even in December it’s hot as hell. I don’t miss this.

We heft our bags out of the trunk and head across a small parking lot. Bright orange sodium-vapor street lamps throw eerie shifting shadows across the ground as the four of us walk toward my parents’ “temporary” home. Calling it a home of any kind is an insult to the word.

What it is, is an ugly two story apartment building—apparently one of several identical structures arranged along a series of interconnected parking areas, making it feel as if the unsightly late-model Toyota Corollas, Nissan Sentras and Chevy pick-ups—so ubiquitous in this middle-class part of Broward County—were the first priority, with living accommodations for actual humans being a minor afterthought.
The building itself is typical South Florida—as indigenous to the area as mosquitoes and mullets, assholes and Amber Alerts. I can practically describe it with my eyes closed, which to be honest would be better for my constitution right now.

It’s a beige stucco job, trimmed in unattractive, dark-brown wood. Doors to the individual apartments line the upper and lower floors, with a long landing and brown metal railing bisecting the building horizontally. There’s patchy grass in between each structure that I imagine loops around back, no doubt sloping into a canal, man-made watering hole, or some other alligator and/or child-enticing deathtrap which serves no purpose other than to allow the real estate company to make the hyperbolic claim that the apartments are “waterfront.” Here and there across the bottom of each building are patches of discoloration where months if not years of hard water from the sprinklers have left rainbow-shaded arcs on the paint.

For obvious reasons, I didn’t notice the name of the subdivision on the way in, but I figure that—in the stifling lexicon of suburban banality—it’s some catchy little mix-and-match combo, arranged from a predetermined set of maybe nine or ten specific words which the development company found tested well with focus groups.

Forest Trace.

Trace Wind.

Wind Glen.

Glen Close.

Anything that calls to mind the simple serenity of nature while hopefully distracting you from the fact that in reality, you live a block away from three strip malls and probably right next door to a meth lab.



“The guest room is right down that hall,” my mother says, motioning to her left as she walks in the door ahead of us.

Kara turns and disappears into the room—our room during our stay here. I use what little strength I have left to fight the punishing urge to simply climb into bed, pull the covers up and let the full nightmare wash over me.

At least three more days of this—maybe longer.

Instead, I take a moment to look around the tiny two-bedroom apartment and face my mother and father’s new reality head-on. The inside is nothing more than an uninterrupted continuation of the exterior: A world of beige. I recognize the furniture from the old house—the huge four-bedroom home with the big pool and the bigger backyard that my parents were forced to sell because my father lost his job—only here the effect isn’t comforting, but confusing. Relics of my family’s life—my life—have been haphazardly wedged into this tiny space. The feel is nothing less than oppressive—as if this shitty apartment has somehow captured my family and its memories and is now holding them hostage. My eyes finally come to rest on a dark figure which, despite its small size, takes up an uncomfortable amount of space in the corner of the room. As if on cue, my mother gets down on her hands and knees and reaches behind it. After a brief struggle with the plug, the little tree lights up, bathing the room in the colors of Christmas. My mother stands up and forces her best holiday-season smile as if to say, “See, it’s not so bad.” I can’t help but think of A Charlie Brown Christmas. This is the tree Charlie Brown would’ve brought back to those unappreciative little bastards if he’d gone the artificial route and did his shopping at Rite-Aid.

Gone is the majestic Christmas tree of my childhood.

Gone is my sense that my parents are larger than life.

Gone is the future my mother and father had dreamed of for themselves.

Gone is home.

That mysterious and unrelenting feeling I couldn’t put my finger on back at the airport: Sadness. Overwhelming sadness.

“Where’s the rest of the furniture?” I ask, aware that in my current state these words sound a whole lot like the verses of The Who’s My Generation.

“Sebring,” my father answers economically, stretching out in his recliner and switching on the television.

“Maybe we can take a ride up there while you’re here,” my mother adds, busying herself around what passes for a living room. “You’d like the house. It’s much smaller than the old place, but once we get it finished it’s really going to be nice.”

She turns to look at me now, her face and tone suddenly shifting from the doting mom, to the serious and strong woman I’ve grown up with my entire life.

“I’ll tell you something. I think it’s the best house we’ve ever owned.”

I just nod. Simple acknowledgement is about the best I can do right now. I’m fully aware that there’s no chance in hell that I’m going to see the new house while I’m down here—the one they paid cash for in Sebring with the money from the old place. I’ll be lucky if I make it out of bed at any point over the next few days. The center of the state is out of the question. I already know how unfortunate that is, because I want nothing more than to get as far away from this depressing place as possible. I want to see a light at the end of the tunnel for them, because if I don’t, this is the only image I’ll be left with: The people I love, stuck here.

My hyper-aware skin senses a shift in the air behind me, and suddenly there’s a hand on my forehead. I hear Kara’s voice.

“Time to get you to bed. You’re on fire,” she says.

She seems truly concerned, but since sweet-and-nurturing isn’t usually in her repertoire, I can’t help but wonder if the spousal compassion isn’t just more of an act put on for my parents. Either way I lean forward into her hand, feeling like my head is melting around it.

“You sure you don’t want me to call Dr. Graubert?” my mother asks.

I stop a second to wonder how long it would take for our family physician to figure out what’s really wrong with me. Best to keep him out of it. I feel like a criminal who’s been shot but refuses to go to the hospital.

“Nope,” I say, forcing a pained smile. “Just want to go to bed.”

My mother disappears and quickly returns with two Tylenol PMs and a glass of water. I happily swallow the pills, hopeful that they’ll somehow help me sleep through part of this.

“It’s good to have you back,” she says, cupping my hot face in her hands and kissing me on the cheek goodnight. “Try and get some sleep. Maybe you’ll feel better in the morning.”

Not a chance.


Years ago, it took the events of one night to pretty much stop me from doing ecstasy altogether. Up until that experience, I had spent weekend after weekend indulging in a drug and a lifestyle that I really couldn’t say anything bad about. This, despite the fact that it was a shamefully cavalier attitude toward substance abuse that probably contributed to the car accident that killed my best friend. Never one to learn his goddamned lesson, I went on partying long after Jorge’s mysterious plunge into that canal. I’m convinced that it nearly cost me my own life one night at a rave in the desert outside San Diego. That’s where I bought and downed two pills of unknown origin, already a violation of a rule that I’d at least been smart enough to live by for years: You don’t buy from someone you don’t know, particularly at a rave. The result was a ride through hell I’ll likely never forget. Whatever it was that I ingested, it sure as hell wasn’t ecstasy. It left me hallucinating and terrified for my life to the point where—for the first time in a long and illustrious career of doing drugs—I seriously considered pulling the rip-cord. As I laid on the cold ground feeling the thumping heartbeat of the music, my vision beginning to funnel into pinpoints, I gathered what little was left of my wits and made the decision that I was going to approach one of the many cops roaming the desert fairgrounds, tell him what was happening to me and beg him to get me to an ambulance. For someone who had never been arrested for drugs—whose use was unknown to all but his closest friends—I knew what crossing that Rubicon would mean, and I didn’t care. I didn’t want to die.

In the end, I wound up doing neither.

At some point—I barely remember when—I was rescued. I felt soft hands wrap around the back of my heavy head and cradle it gently. A woman’s face leaning down—her hair brushing my skin. My head coming to rest in her lap. She began to sing to me in a voice that sounded like nothing less than that of an angel, while stroking my cheek with her fingertips. I let my eyes flutter and close, and drifted away from the horror.

“You’re going to be alright,” I heard her whisper.

I never fully thanked her.


This is the memory that’s occupying what little of my mind isn’t on fire right now. An hour after kissing my mother goodnight, I’m in the double bed which takes up most of the small guest bedroom. The lights are off and the room itself is all endless darkness. I can hear my wife’s steady breathing next to me. Its rhythm is usually enough to help lull me to sleep, but that’s nothing more than a fantasy right now. There will be no sleep. None. My entire body is being shredded—as if I every molecule inside me is moving at a speed so fast that the friction is creating unbearable, unstoppable heat. It’s taking every ounce of self-control I have left to restrict my painful writhing to the point where my wife might not notice. I know my mouth is open in a grisly, tormented silent scream. Teeth bared. Breath hot and thick. I want to rip my stomach open and pull my white-hot guts out to let them breathe in the open air. Like all those years ago, I want to pull the rip-cord. I want to confess the truth to my parents. To my wife. To the world. I want to beg someone for heroin. I want to get to a hospital. I’m fully aware that there will be no compassionate angel to save me this time. For a moment I allow myself to wonder where she is right now. How I would give anything to see her again. Feel her soft touch. Hear her whisper in my ear: “You’re going to be alright.”

My lips tighten at the thought of this and my eyes squeeze shut until all I see is a rolling collage of violent red and orange behind my eyelids. There it is: Hell. I can feel the tears beginning to run down the sides of my face. I swear I can feel them boiling as gravity pulls them across my scorched skin—sizzling and dancing into dark streaks like the heroin that caused them.

I’m calling out to God in my head.

I’m so sorry! Please help me!

I’m screaming inside.

No one’s listening.

No one can help me.

Not this time.

This time there’s only the destruction I’ve earned.


There’s a sudden flash of white. It’s a searing pain that feels like knives being plunged through my eyes, my brain, and into the back of my skull. It could be moments or hours later. My arms are wrapped tightly around my body because now that I’m out of bed, the air out in the open feels like ice water against my skin. As my eyes adjust to the sudden sickly light, my surroundings come into a difficult focus.

Pale yellowish wallpaper.

A brown faux-wood Formica vanity.

A light blue vinyl shower curtain, which I quickly pull aside—snapping it from several of the cheap plastic hooks which attach it to the rod.

Cold linoleum tile against my scalding-hot feet.

I’m in the hall bathroom.

Another homogenous room in another homogenous apartment in another homogenous building in this homogenous development.

Sandal Bay.

Bay Ridge.

Ridge Run.

Run for your life.

I begin to choke on my own mucus, causing me to cough loudly until I begin to vomit into the toilet. I feel my stomach spasm—it’s lining being ripped away. I try to stand, then double over, catching myself in time to stop my body from falling completely into the mustard-colored fiberglass bathtub. I crank the faucet and the water begins to rush powerfully into the tub. I flip the stopper into place and start to swirl the water with my hand, willing the bathtub to fill faster. With one fluid motion I slide out of my t-shirt and boxer shorts, both of which are soaked with cold sweat, letting them drop to the floor with a sopping splat. I pour my naked body into the rising hot water. As it envelops me completely I want to scream, but all I can manage is a pained and pathetic whimper.

I close my eyes and exhale loudly—pushing as much air from my burning insides as possible—then breathe in just as deeply. The new air fills me with at least a measure of calm. The water soothes my skin and seems to regulate my body temperature. I’m no longer a freakish combination of scalding and freezing. My muscles ease. The fire subsides slightly.

It’s not an angel, but for now it will have to do.

All God's Children

This morning, the Today show continued its bizarre love affair with the traveling Evangelical baby factory known as the Duggar clan -- which allows me to "resurrect" (pardon the pun) what I wrote the last time these people appeared on the show, four months ago. For the record, I kept waiting for the Duggar mom to announce this morning that she was pregnant again while she was still carrying her latest child.

In case you were lucky enough to miss it, the Duggar family took time out from its hectic overpopulation schedule to grace the Today show this morning, where they were treated to heaps of warm encomia on-camera (and were mercilessly joked about off-camera). For those who don't have a subscription to Procreation Weekly, the Duggars -- Jim Bob and Michelle -- are the lucky parents of 17 children. Michelle, who essentially has an assembly line that ends at her cervix, cranks out about a kid a year, and has since 1988.

It goes completely without saying that the Duggars are full-on fundamentalist Christians who live in Arkansas, don't believe in contraception, home-school their entire brood, and somehow find a way to joyfully drop the name of the Lord every fifteen seconds or so like there's a Skinner Box treat in it for them.

Think of the Flanders -- times nine.

Or maybe that polygamist cult in Texas, as dressed by the Gap.

All morning, Today hyped the appearance by America's favorite freakshow, teasing viewers with hints of a "big announcement" that mom Michelle was going to make live on the air.

If you couldn't see this one coming, you were probably home-schooled: That's right, they're having another baby -- number 18!

At least the show's producers had the cynical forethought not to tease that it was a "big surprise announcement."

I really don't have a joke here; this whole thing kind of makes its own gravy. I just needed somebody to laugh at and poke with a stick this morning and you know something, the Duggars are right -- the Lord does provide.

(Incidentally, yes, that's them in the picture)

Picture of the Week (And It's Only Monday)

From Gawker, a photo snapped in the 28th Avenue subway stop here in New York City.

Fail? Oh no, my friends -- win.

Listening Post

It's one of those seemingly impossible feats in popular music.

In 2001, after 21 years together (25 if you count Joy Division), New Order somehow recorded the most vital album of their career. By all accounts, Get Ready could've and probably should've been an afterthought -- an effort that barely registered on the cultural radar from a group whose best days were surely behind it.

Instead, the damn thing barreled along with astonishing ferocity -- beginning with this opening track.

Here's Crystal.

Raptor Ready

From the L.A. Times:

"Soon after Sarah Palin was elected mayor of the foothill town of Wasilla, Alaska, she startled a local music teacher by insisting in casual conversation that men and dinosaurs coexisted on an Earth created 6,000 years ago -- about 65 million years after scientists say most dinosaurs became extinct -- the teacher said.

After conducting a college band and watching Palin deliver a commencement address to a small group of home-schooled students in June 1997, Wasilla resident Philip Munger said, he asked the young mayor about her beliefs. Palin told him that 'dinosaurs and humans walked the Earth at the same time,' Munger said. When he asked her about prehistoric fossils and tracks dating back millions of years, Palin said 'she had seen pictures of human footprints inside the tracks.'"

For the record, it's not that Palin's claims have anything to do with religion -- she just didn't pay attention in science class and really doesn't know how old the earth is.

Sunday Sacrilege

Saturday Might

My God, I love Tina Fey.

Quote of the Week (Runner-Up)

"How the fuck are you gonna make decisions about the future when you ain't even gonna be here?"

-- Chris Rock, talking about John McCain

Interlude

It just amazes me how many items related to this election have been so hysterical/terrifying that I just couldn't have made them up or improved upon them if I tried.

And this one may be the best/worst of all of them. There's nothing about it that isn't so flawlessly, nightmarishly surreal as to qualify as art.

Go here at your own risk.

"I'm John McCain, and I Approved This Horseshit"

Did McCain really mutter "horseshit" under his breath twice during last night's debate?

I wish I could say that it's utterly preposterous, but this is John McCain we're talking about.

Decide for yourself.

Saturday Morning Cartoons

See what happens when rednecks screw with intellectuals?

From 1955, here's Foghorn Leghorn in Feather Dusted.

He Grinned Like a Baby but Bit Like a Gator

The Sting is one of my all-time favorite movies. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and Cool Hand Luke aren't far behind.

Which is why it hurts like hell to hear that Paul Newman -- one of Hollywood's truly great leading men, a movie star's movie star -- has died at the age of 83.

Newman was immensely talented, great-looking, an adventurer, compassionate and caring toward his fellow man, and most of all -- just plain cool.

They really don't make them like him anymore.

And maybe that's what makes the loss that much tougher to take.

Talking Points

Let's be honest -- Barack Obama didn't really win last night's debate.

He didn't lose it, but he certainly didn't knock it out of the park.

Just how well he fared depends on how you measure victory. The glass-half-full viewpoint is that he more than held his own against a career politician who's spent most of this campaign casting him as dangerously untested; if the goal was simply to appear steadfast and, indeed, presidential, then yes, Obama can put one in the win column. But the glass-half-empty viewpoint -- and have you figured out by now where I fall? -- is that it was Obama who faced a doddering, erratic, panicked opponent who's not only completely out of touch with the problems of modern America but who spent the past two weeks making questionable judgment call after questionable judgment call, and yet he didn't completely mop the floor with him.

Barack Obama had ample opportunity last night to leave John McCain in the dust, and yet for whatever reason he didn't do it. He's smarter than McCain, more eloquent than McCain, and infinitely more personable than McCain; in my mind this should've been a blowout. But then maybe I'm being too harsh -- expecting too much from what's traditionally a very staid affair.

My biggest complaint -- and I can't help but feel that this is a pretty subjective view -- is that Obama allowed McCain to get away with far too much: He let McCain claim that he was naive and "didn't understand" over and over without hitting back hard; he never bothered to bring up the elephant in the room -- McCain's bizarre political stunt that may have contributed to the collapse of the bailout negotiations in Washington and almost killed the debate itself; and, worst of all, he kept agreeing with McCain, saying "Well, John's right about..." Even if you believe it, for God's sake don't begin every other answer by verifying it. You issue a statement like that maybe once just to show that you're magnanimous; you don't say it several times and leave yourself open to a cleverly edited ad that the other guy can throw on the air by morning. ("Even Barack Obama knows that John McCain is right!")

He didn't need to get angry; he just needed to put McCain in his place with a Ronald Reagan "There You Go Again" moment.

Make no mistake though: Obama did manage an inarguable draw, and maybe that's enough. There will be two more of these debates to come -- to say nothing of the Stephanie McMahon vs. The Rock steel cage match scheduled for October 2nd, provided McCain's people can't somehow make it go away before then -- and Obama will no doubt take what he learned from this first one and hit harder and smarter the next time around.

It's just that it would be a shame if McCain's relatively adequate performance -- albeit one tinged with plenty of Bush-like smugness and condescension -- brought his narrative back from the precipice and allowed America to forget the batshit lunacy of the past couple of weeks.

Listening Post

Ah, the 80s kick continues.

Here's the rarely seen video for INXS's To Look At You.

That's What She Said

Watch this pretty startling clip from CNN's The Situation Room this afternoon. Jack Cafferty pulls no punches and says what most of us are thinking when it comes to Sarah Palin, and refuses to allow Wolf Blitzer to defend her.

Watch it, then go read what Jacki Schechner has to say about it. She's equally unwilling to let the media off the hook.

(Where Was I?: Truth Be Told/9.26.08)

Reality Bites

Kathleen Parker of the National Review -- that would be the very conservative National Review -- has recently had a bucket of ice cold water dumped on her.

It came in the form of Sarah Palin's performance during the few interviews the McCain camp has allowed her to take part in.

From Parker's column today:

"It was fun while it lasted.

Palin’s recent interviews with Charles Gibson, Sean Hannity, and now Katie Couric have all revealed an attractive, earnest, confident candidate. Who Is Clearly Out Of Her League. No one hates saying that more than I do. Like so many women, I’ve been pulling for Palin, wishing her the best, hoping she will perform brilliantly. I’ve also noticed that I watch her interviews with the held breath of an anxious parent, my finger poised over the mute button in case it gets too painful. Unfortunately, it often does. My cringe reflex is exhausted.

If BS were currency, Palin could bail out Wall Street herself."

So what does Parker suggest Sarah Palin do to help salvage the McCain campaign?

Drop out.

(The National Review Online: "The Palin Problem" by Kathleen Parker/9.26.08)

Listening Post (Friday Bonus Edition)

I'm obviously feeling very retro today.

This is one of the best covers ever done -- seriously.

Don't ask, just play.

Blink

Well, l guess that stunt's over.

Now tell me, who looks steady, focused and assured -- and who looks like an erratic, confused, crazy old man?

(The New York Times: McCain Will Participate in Debate/9.26.08)

Oh yeah, and not only is he going to be there tonight, if you believe an internet ad his team is circulating -- he's already won.


Like I said a couple of days ago -- we're in seriously uncharted territory now. This is either a dangerously unhinged man or just a shockingly incompetent campaign.

It's Christmas Morning

Ladies and gentlemen, the next Vice President of the United States...

(Update: The video's been pulled. Not sure by whom.)

Where's Johnny? (Part II)

I spoke too soon when I said that drama queen McCain's little plan to use the bailout negotiations to get out of tonight's debate had backfired in spectacular fashion.

It actually backfired in unbelievably spectacular fashion.

(ABC News: You Break It.../9.26.08)

(On that note, a great quote from Bob Cesca's piece that ran a couple of days ago at HuffPost: "So what will a McCain administration economic policy look like? From the lack of foresight and leadership we've witnessed so far, we can assume that McCain might choose a new economic policy totally at random, depending on how saucy he feels from minute to minute. 'I'll have a muffin with my Egg Beaters, and replace Bernanke with that hooplehead who weedwacks the knoll.' Two minutes later... 'Hey Phil, we don't need the Nasdaq anymore. Kill it.' Two minutes later... 'My God! What have I done! Quickly -- nationalize the paintball industry! Go!' One thing is for sure. Expecting a workable solution to this economic meltdown from a man as knee-jerk, dishonest and incomprehensible as John McCain would be an exercise in national self-destruction. He doesn't have anything real to say, and what he does say, he can't sell. He simply can't do the gig. A vote for McCain-Palin is absolutely a vote for the end of America as we know it.)

The Court v. Public Opinion

I'll make this quick, which is probably a good thing since what I'm about to say likely won't be very popular.

Georges Clemenceau once famously said that war is too important to be left to the generals. Well, I'm starting to believe that from what we've seen lately -- the trickery, lies and dangerous gambits of the McCain campaign and the fact that its only competition isn't blowing it fully and comfortably out of the water in the nationwide polls -- the future of this country may be too important to be left to the people.

Or, more specifically, to the half of this country that values ignorance, provincial charm, impressive deception, unwavering party allegiance and mindless ideology above not simply a government based on thoughtful analysis but above the very lives of the people who live under it.

If you've seen enough courtroom dramas, you know that often when a lawyer makes a questionable argument or takes a dubious stand on behalf of his client, the judge will sometimes decide that it goes too far in the direction of subverting the very concept our legal system stands for: justice. He or she will essentially say that the argument is so prejudicial -- so out-of-bounds -- that the jury shouldn't even be allowed to hear it. And so it's thrown out.

It happens in court all the time.

Why can't it be allowed to happen on a national scale -- in the current presidential election?

Here's my point: Sarah Palin isn't simply unqualified to be vice president -- or God forbid, president -- she's thoroughly unqualified. If installed in office, the McCain ticket will have put this country in imminent danger. What's worse, the reason Palin was selected for the campaign actually has nothing to do with her qualifications or lack thereof to begin with; it was a purely political choice -- a shifty little trick designed to nab the narrative and nail down the conservative base which, quite frankly, doesn't typically employ any semblance of logic or reason in voting for a candidate anyway. On the contrary, there are those who support Palin specifically because they believe she will be a harbinger of the End Times and help hasten the rapture. McCain counted on this when he chose her; he didn't bother to vet her properly and didn't care one bit that she might not be prepared to take on the responsibilities of being a vice president. (If you need proof, look at the way he cynically attempts to hide her from anyone who might put her in a position where she'd make it clear that she has no idea what she's talking about and has no place being where she is right now.)

So why can't someone step in and declare that this candidacy isn't fit to be handed to the voters?

I realize that, as usual, this will get me slapped with the ubiquitous "elitist" tag, but by now the reality of Sarah Palin is beyond speculation or opinion; it's pretty much proven fact to anyone with a brain.

McCain is currently and consistently lying to win this election and if he succeeds, the nation as a whole will pay the price because his vice president doesn't meet even the paltriest of standards for assuming the office.

Who can step in and halt this farce?

I'm not quite sure, but I'd be inclined to offer this suggestion -- which I admit doesn't come from a lawyer, so take it for what it's worth: the Supreme Court made a decision regarding the 2000 election that changed all of our lives irrevocably; maybe it's time someone availed him or herself of our hallowed legal system and truly did try to have this put to a judge.

Who'll be the first to file an emergency injunction against the McCain campaign?

Anyone?

Forgetting Sarah Palin

Sarah Palin's most singularly offensive quality is the one she shares with George Bush: a near-lethal combination of arrogance and ignorance -- as if incurious provincialism is something to revel in and be smug about, rather than be embarrassed by. Case in point, this laughable exchange from yesterday's interview with Katie Couric:

Couric: You met yesterday with former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who is for direct diplomacy with both Iran and Syria. Do you believe the U.S. should negotiate with leaders like President Assad and Ahmadinejad?

Palin: I think, with Ahmadinejad, personally, he is not one to negotiate with. You can't just sit down with him with no preconditions being met. Barack Obama is so off-base in his proclamation that he would meet with some of these leaders around our world who would seek to destroy America and that, and without preconditions being met. That's beyond naïve. And it's beyond bad judgment.

Couric: Are you saying Henry Kissinger ... is naïve for supporting that?

So let's recap: Henry Kissinger, who was secretly waging wars in countries Sarah Palin's never evern heard of while she was giving her first blow jobs to boys to get them to like her, is naïve and Palin has the credentials to say so.

Seriously, when can we put this fucking idiot behind us and let her get back to waiting for the rapture?

Listening Post

A total blast from the past -- this is one of my favorite songs from the 80s. In fact, a band I played in as a teenager did a pretty rip-roaring cover of this -- but how can you not?

Here's Jason and the Scorchers' White Lies.

I Guess He Won't Have Time to Hit the Early Bird Special

"To get in the debating mood, John McCain will take a short nap. His rival, Barack Obama, will work out or shoot hoops."

-- From The Wall Street Journal, 9.22.08

Miss Informed 2008

From part two of Katie Couric's interview with Sarah Palin: Specifically watch 1:51-2:55 of this -- Palin's incomprehensible answer to a question about the bailout, complete with several glances at her notes -- then once again watch the video below.



(Update: And then there's this: Palin once again trying to justify at length her belief that Alaska's proximity to Russia makes her well versed in foreign policy. I swear this will make your fucking brain implode it's so unbelievably stupid. As my friend Jacki Schechner implies, this idiot makes the girls on The Hills look like Rhodes Scholars. Americablog: Blithering Idiot/9.25.08)

(Update II: Love this quote: "Three weeks after the 2008 Republican convention, on the cusp (maybe) of the first presidential debate, it is time to confront an awkward but profound question: whether in picking Sarah Palin as his running mate, John McCain has committed -- by his own professed standards of duty and honor -- a singularly unpatriotic act. 'I would rather lose a political campaign than lose a war,' he has said throughout this campaign. Yet, in choosing Palin, he has demonstrated -- whatever his words -- it may be permissible to imperil the country, conceivably even to 'lose' it, in order to win the presidency. That would seem the deeper meaning of his choice of Palin. Indeed, no presidential nominee of either party in the last century has seemed so willing to endanger the country's security as McCain in his reckless choice of a running mate." -- Carl Bernstein)

You Won't Fool the Children of the Revolution

You know something?

At the risk of sounding overly bellicose -- if this were a different time and a different place, the White House would have been overrun by an angry mob by now and George W. Bush likely would've been dragged kicking and screaming to the guillotine.

(The Atlanta Journal Constitution: Wall Street Bailout: 10 Reasons to Just Say No/9.25.08)

Where's Johnny?

Well, that little plan just backfired in spectacular fashion.

Barack Obama has not only called John McCain's bluff by refusing to agree to a postponement of tomorrow night's first presidential debate -- he says that if McCain doesn't show, he'll stage the thing as a town meeting and agree to take questions from moderator Jim Lehrer.

This basically holds the narrative tightly with both hands and lands the ball squarely in McCain's court, putting him in one hell of a bind: If McCain doesn't show, Obama stands there in front of the millions of people watching and gets to own the moment while McCain's podium remains empty, reminding everyone that McCain backed down from a fight; meanwhile, if McCain does show, it proves that he played a game of chicken and lost.

Obama basically turned the tables on McCain and created his own no-win scenario.

Regardless of what happens, tomorrow night should be interesting.

Money Makes the Girl Go Round

The economy being what it is right now, NBC is taking every opportunity to throw CNBC's money babe, Erin Burnett, on the air to provide analysis and give Wall Street brokers and investors one last fantasy to take to their graves as they auto-erotically asphyxiate themselves. This also gives me the chance to bring back this rude little entry from last January.

I realize I'm a little late to the party on this one, but it's not as if I get some kind of Bat-signal every time one of America's TV news talking-heads makes a colossal ass out of him or herself. I'd never get anything done.

Earlier this month, CNBC's Erin Burnett -- who's been dubbed, in thoroughly professional fashion, the "Street Sweetie" -- penned a column for Men's Health magazine, supposedly detailing the eight ways in which a potential suitor might impress her and, one would imagine, melt her cold, cold heart.

Unfortunately, though not unexpectedly, it reads like The Narcissistic Bitch's Guide to Gold-Digging.

I admit that Erin Burnett is positively gorgeous -- an opinion confirmed in the tawdriest of manners by Chris Matthews's inability to talk to her on-air without little hearts dancing over his head -- and if her almost impossibly over-the-top list of turn-ons is some kind of Kaufmanesque joke, she's also the coolest woman on Earth. But it's not beyond the realm of possibility that she's completely serious when she insinuates that the simple gestures she longs for all involve the use of an American Express Black Card.

Well, never one to deny the desires of a beautiful woman, I want to not only take the lovely Miss Burnett up on her challenge -- I'd like to offer my own list of the eight things she might do, in turn, to win my little-boy affections.

I've already taken the liberty of mailing my entire wallet as well as the contents of my 401k and a couple of hits of ecstasy I found buried in my medicine cabinet to Erin's Park Avenue address.

As for my requests -- they are, needless to say, made in spirit of Erin's own list.

Ladies first:

(Men's Health: Erin Burnett's "8 Ways to Impress Me")

Now, mine:

1. Life's a Beach I'm a big fan of long walks on the beach, my feet sinking into the sand as cool waves swirl around my heels. If Erin would buy me Hawaii, that'd be awesome.

2. Pleased to Meet Them Music is one of my passions. I'd truly appreciated it if Erin would get the Replacements back together, including bringing Bob Stinson back from the dead, and pay them to play in my living room -- nightly.

3. The Better to See You With I can't imagine a more wonderful evening than one that involves Erin and myself curled up on the couch, her rubbing my feet and my tired XBOX hand, watching her on television. This is why Erin should buy me a 70" plasma-screen HDTV.

4. Forever in Her Debt Since I plan to shower Erin with gifts of all shapes and sizes, buying her anything her heart desires, I can only ask that she pay off all my credit card bills and give me her own cards to use -- you know, just in case of emergency.

5. Please My Palate Too Like my scrumptious CNBC goddess, I'm a big fan of great food. It's for this reason that I'd like Erin to kill Rachael Ray and bring me her heart. Then go out and buy me something -- anything at all.

6. Family Ties I agree with Erin that there's nothing more important than family. If she really wants to impress me -- and I know she does -- she'll tattoo a giant image of my beloved Grand-dad on her stomach so that her pubic hair becomes his beard. If by some chance she's fully waxed, that's okay -- Grand-dad needed a shave anyway. I expect her to have the work done at High Voltage Tattoo in Los Angeles, pay for it, then buy me the studio and engage in a threesome with myself and Kat Von D.

7. Like a Prayer I consider myself a very spiritual person. I wake each morning with a smile on my face and a song of praise in my heart, grateful for the new day that God has given me and the bounty of treasures -- material and rarefied -- that he's bestowed upon me. I put my life in the caring hands of Jesus Christ and accept that there is no obstacle too daunting for the one true God. He will reward those who believe in him and punish those who defile his divine name. Unfortunately, he tends to take his time with the whole punishment thing, so I'd like Erin to buy me the Roman Catholic church, execute Benedict XVI and have me elected Pope under penalty of death.

8. Put Her There Nothing, and I mean nothing compares to life's simplest pleasures, to wit, a nice cup of tea just before bed. This is why there's no better way for Erin to prove her undying love -- than to let me teabag her.

Erin, if you're out there reading this, I'll be awaiting your response -- or your lawyer's anyway.

Requiem for a Nightmare

I've never been one of those people to proclaim that George W. Bush is the worst president in the history of this country. I didn't live under the presidencies of all those who came before him so I can't speak from any sort of real time experience. That said, it is true -- despite what Bush firmly believes his legacy will be -- that as time fades, the only real measure anyone in the distant future will have of this particular administration is the series of events that defined it.

I'm talking about what happened during George W. Bush's eight years in office.

Years from now, there will be no nuance or ability to debate the pros and cons with any sense of context; there will only be those historical landmarks consigned to the history books with an absolute authority.

And they are:

The attacks of 9/11, the inability to catch the man most responsible for those attacks, a preemptive war in Iraq sold to the American people through faulty intelligence and questionable misdirection, the intentional and vengeful exposure of a CIA agent and the commutation of the sentence handed down against the one person charged in the case, the expansion of "extraordinary rendition," a war in Afghanistan (right or wrong), Abu Ghraib, the weakening of America's position in the world community, the Walter Reed Army Medical Center scandal, the Constitutionally dubious nature of the Patriot Act, warrantless wiretapping, the Guantanamo Bay prison camp, the authorized waterboarding of prisoners and the debate over whether or not to torture, an incompetent and apathetic response to Hurricane Katrina that cost the lives of hundreds.

And now this, the final domino: the collapse of the American economy -- a potential second Great Depression.

All of this happened on Bush's watch.

You know something, I stand corrected -- I actually do believe that George W. Bush may very well go down in history as this country's worst president.

Listening Post

I've said it before but it bears repeating: These guys are the only band out of the surprisingly large crop trying to cultivate the neo-Romantic Goth aesthetic to get it right. Everything about their sound is dark and sensual. If you can't get laid to this stuff, give it up.

This is the music of lust.

It's She Wants Revenge, with These Things.

Politics Unusual

We're in uncharted waters here, folks.

When it comes to politics, anyone who's lived long enough has likely seen his or her share of strange bedfellows, October Surprises, clever gimmicks and underhanded, Machiavellian machinations -- but this is something new completely. This is lunatic trickery in its absolute purest form.

What the McCain campaign is attempting right now -- what this latest desperate play amounts to at the end of every other desperate play that's come before it -- is nothing short of staggering. By announcing the temporary suspension of his campaign, John McCain hopes to lure Barack Obama into a kind of trap that only the most craven and cynical of political operatives could dream up. He truly believes that he's concocted his own little Kobayashi Maru scenario whereby Obama, no matter his move, can't win: If he agrees to McCain's ludicrous suggestion that both sides call a truce until the economic bailout bill is negotiated -- which would include postponing Friday night's debate -- McCain can claim victory; if he refuses to relent and continues to campaign even as his opponent doesn't, McCain can point to it as an example of Obama putting his own interests above those of his country. McCain once again can wrap himself in the big banner of "Country First."

It's a Hail Mary pass like nothing we've seen in American politics in, well, perhaps ever.

And it won't work -- at least not the way McCain hopes.

First of all, it would be a different story if Obama weren't lurching so far ahead in the national polls right now -- tainting what might otherwise have seemed like a moment of mad genius with the stench of utter desperation. What's more daunting, though, is how ironically unsurprising this gambit is in the context of the rest of the McCain campaign. For weeks now, we've watched McCain play parlor trick after parlor trick; tell lie upon lie; go backward then forward then sideways; issue confirmation then denial and back, all in an effort to win at any cost. He pulled Sarah Palin out of his ass to grab women voters, energize the base, and capture the narrative, then hid her from the press in the presumptuous hope that no one would notice how frighteningly unqualified she is -- to say nothing of outright dumb. He called for the head of SEC chairman Chris Cox, then the very next day called him "a good man." He threw ads on the air which made claims that weren't simply dubious, they could be disproved by any 6th grader with a laptop. He drew a hardline in the sand that in essence would plunge this country into a tense standoff not just with its enemies but with an ally, all because he was unwilling to admit that he made a mistake and misunderstood the question he was being asked in the first place.

And now, most confusingly, he sounds an alarm of American Armageddon -- saying that the current economic crisis requires that he suspend his campaign, otherwise the country will face a new Great Depression by next Monday -- when just nine days ago he declared that the fundamentals of our economy are strong.

Feel free to call all of this audaciously shrewd. Feel free to say it smacks of Rovian brilliance.

It doesn't.

It doesn't prove McCain is crazy like a fox -- it proves he's just crazy.

The reality of what he's hoping to accomplish with this tactic is nothing so sublime as to even qualify as canny political opportunism. The reality is that McCain hopes that by moving this Friday's presidential debate to October 2nd, he can then push the debate scheduled for that night -- the vice presidential debate between Job Biden and Sarah Palin -- back, well, maybe indefinitely. He's calling a time out not only to give himself some breathing space while his team, which is down heavily with very little time left on the clock, figures out its next play -- he's doing it in the hope of keeping the cheerleader he drafted on a whim from ever having to get in the game.

Thankfully, Obama is calling him on this bullshit. He's insisting that America, now more than ever, needs to hear from the two people who are vying to become its next leader -- that there should be no mistaking what each candidate plans for the future of this nation if elected. Likewise, he's laying into McCain for the latter's tacit admission that when things get bad -- really bad -- the only option is to take a break. A president has to be able to deal with not simply one crisis but ten if necessary, and not back down, no matter the conditions.

What Barack Obama is saying, without actually coming out and saying it, is that debating the fate of our economy and every other issue confronting us is nothing less than a necessity -- a patriotic duty -- right now.

Come to think of it, Obama should go ahead and just say it:

He's the one putting "Country First."

Interlude

How to Dismantle a Moronic Mom

While You Were Out Campaigning...

Time magazine's Mark Halperin has published an Obama campaign release that's just revealing as all hell.

It runs down some of the national and international crises of the past half-century that could've led to candidates canceling one presidential debate or another -- but didn't.

(Time: Debate History/9.24.08)

Quote of the Week (and It's Only Wednesday)

"You don't suspend your campaign. This doesn't smell right. This isn't the way a tested hero behaves. I think someone's putting something in his Metamucil. He can't run the campaign because the economy is cratering? Fine, put in your second string quarterback, Sara Palin. Where is she? What are you going to do if you're elected and things get tough? Suspend being president? We've got a guy like that now!"

-- David Letterman, talking about John McCain

Cut and Run

What a difference a week and nine points in the national polls make.

I actually had to do a double-take when I first saw this story, figuring I was reading it wrong because there was just no way it could be true. He may be a half-batshit old man, but John McCain simply wouldn't allow himself to be put in a position where it could look to some voters like he was, well, running scared.

But nope, it's true.

John McCain wants to postpone Friday's first presidential debate with Barack Obama.

The excuse he's offering is that, suddenly, now is not the time for partisan bickering -- that he's planning to suspend his campaign temporarily to focus on the current economic catastrophe and that Barack Obama should do likewise for the good of the country. For those playing along at home, that would be the economic catastrophe caused by the deregulation, mismanagement, unfettered greed and bald-faced incompetence that his party willfully promoted and which he himself has espoused (regardless of the horseshit he's spewing now in an effort to distance himself from this disastrous mess).

So basically, McCain wants to call a time out now that his team's down by nine in the fourth quarter (and make no mistake, if the roles were reversed and it was the Obama campaign lagging behind in the polls, McCain not only wouldn't agree to such nonsense, he and his surrogates would be on every television network in America -- even the Cartoon Network -- mercilessly ridiculing Obama for his cowardice, to say nothing of his inability to multitask).

Tell you what -- Obama should agree to let McCain off the hook for Friday provided he agrees to a no-holds-barred joint press conference to include both Joe Biden and Sarah Palin -- during which they'll be grilled about their respective plans for the economy, foreign policy, anything else that comes to mind.

I figure with all that executive experience, Palin should probably have some really good ideas for solving these problems.

And McCain, well, he spent time in a Vietnamese prison camp -- surely he can handle a few pointed questions.

I mean, really, he's a war hero -- there's no way he's afraid.

All Apologies

I just wanted to take a minute to throw out a worthless excuse or two as to why we've been so short on substantial new material around here lately. Unfortunately, I'm still trying to work out a daily rhythm with the baby and find time to write for this site and HuffPost. I'm slowly getting into a groove and hopefully that means more extensive pieces to come in the near future.

In the meantime, I wanted to once again thank everyone who's been kind enough to buy copies of my book, Dead Star Twilight, and particularly those select few who've made surprisingly generous donations to this site via the PayPal link within the past couple of weeks. That sort of kindness, especially given the economy, is incredibly humbling -- but not as humbling as what it says about how much you appreciate the effort that goes into putting Deus Ex Malcontent together and the content itself.

It really keeps me going and I can't express my gratitude enough for that.

Adventures in Passive-Aggression

I stand corrected. As it turns out, there actually was a time before being fired that I published something on this site which directly referenced my job at CNN. Although I never specifically identified where it was that I worked, I wrote a piece back in June of last year that described, in detail, a very bad day I had at the office. It was posted, then quickly taken down after I thought twice about letting my anger and desire to vent my frustration overwhelm my better judgment. This is the first time this column has appeared here in more than a year. It's infinitely more entertaining now that you know exactly which network and show I'm talking about.

I seem to remember making a promise a while back that at no point would this little experiment of mine turn into a "blog" in the traditional sense -- that I'd do everything in my power to prevent the columns that you find here from ever becoming a somewhat dull chronicle of what I'm doing at any given moment.

In other words, this is not my fucking diary.

And yet, there's no denying that although my primary goal here is to entertain, inform, enrage, provoke, pester, what-have-you, the feel of my MacBook's warmth on my lap and the rythmic tapping of my fingers against its shallow keys does hold a certain therapeutic value for your humble narrator, and at the moment this is monumentally important. I make this declaration simply because I had the kind of day at work that, as of yet, nothing has been able to anesthetize.

Not beating the living hell out of a punching bag at the gym for an hour. Not playing a round or two of that Orbitz golf game that pops up on my computer desktop every so often like some internet Jehovah's Witness. Not lighting up a Montecristo Rothschilde. Nothing.

So, maybe all that's left is to get it off my chest. If I earned a living as, say, a drawbridge tender (my dream job -- no lie), relaying the events of my workday to a mass audience would likely be unforgivably self-indulgent. However, because I spend most of my day wearing the hat of a network news producer, I might be able to pass the whole thing off as necessary for the general public's overall edification. I can tell myself that, goddammit, it's important that you people are fully aware just what kind of utter nonsense is involved in bringing you the important events of the day.

Yeah, that's it. That'll work just fine.

Please keep in mind that although by now some of you may have definite theories regarding which television network I work for, I still have to maintain some semblance of discretion. That said, this is the first time that I've pulled back the curtain and allowed anyone an even mildly unflattering look behind the scenes at the daily news program of which I'm currently a part. So, you know, let's just keep it between you and me -- okay?

Actually, now that I think about it -- none of what you're about to read is true. I made it all up.

We'll start at the beginning of my entirely fictional story:

00:00 (Zero Hour)

The alarm on my Blackberry goes off, jolting me out of a dream involving drawbridges (see?). Unlike most mornings, the first words out of my mouth don't bear a striking resemblance to the incomprehensible cursing that Yosemite Sam used to mutter under his breath in the old Warner Brothers cartoons; that's because my wife and I had a wonderful, relaxing weekend and for the first time in a very long time I feel pretty damn good. My current job may not necessarily be the most rewarding; it certainly isn't what I expected to be doing at this point in my life. Still, I shower and dress with a Zen-like calm -- content in the knowledge that, as Talk Talk once said so beautifully, life's what you make it. This morning, I'm determined to make it something great.

A few hours from now, this sentiment will have been crushed into a thousand itty-bitty pieces.

+00:45

I arrive at the office to find that we're alarmingly short-staffed. Apparently, no one realized that one of our key line producers -- a person responsible for actually taking the show into the control room -- was still on vacation. I put my bag down at my desk and meander over to the coffee machine -- using the hot water to make myself a cup of tea. I silently repeat my pledge to make life what I, uh, make it -- over and over -- thereby stopping myself from taking a running start and jumping through the plate glass and to the street far below. I'm Zen, baby.

+01:23

After reading through the day's news, which is admittedly worthless as I really only need to know one or two stories involving fires and dead pregnant women, I begin looking over the show -- my iPod earphones plugged tightly into my head, allowing the serene sounds of Coltrane's In a Sentimental Mood to comfort me as I begin my workday proper.

The big stories of the day, as expected: California fires, a dead pregnant woman, and, supposedly, the World's Ugliest Dog.

If I had actually gone to journalism school, I'd be furious that I had gone to journalism school for this.

+02:41

The first real speed-bump of the day (or at least something with the IQ of a speed-bump): Our regular anchor being off, we've drafted one of the best-looking people in television news to replace him. Unfortunately, this person is -- in keeping with my Warner cartoon theme, and in the words of Foghorn Leghorn -- about as sharp as a sack of wet mice. Our writing staff now finds itself forced to put pronunciation guides into our scripts for any word above a fourth-grade reading level.

I wonder for a brief moment if someone should be proactive and inform him before air that Charles Taylor is the former Liberian president, and not a former librarian.

+04:00

We're trying to come up with four or five ways to say what is essentially the same thing; this dilemma is pretty much par for the course when you have a large block of news and have chosen to fill it by throwing your entire reporting team at every conceivable angle of the Boyfriend-of-Missing-White-Woman-Found-Dead-Now-Charged-with-Murder du jour. I knew this story was going to be "huge" simply because I had noticed over the weekend that despicable ambulance-chaser Nancy Grace had actually come in on her day off to do a "Very Special" edition of her show on CNN Headline News.

One of our scripts reads, "The question everyone is asking is: Who is Bobby Cutts?" -- a reference to the man now charged with killing Ohio mother Jessie Davis.

Truer words were never spoken. Who the hell is Bobby Fucking Cutts?

+05:10

After two more cups of tea, a Diet Coke and a bag of Onion & Garlic Soy Crisps (because the damn machines are out of Bugles), I'm sufficiently amped -- although still maintaining as much Zen as possible, given the circumstances. Those circumstances would be the fact that we as a news organization have already begun our slavish, Riefenstahlian proselytizing in the name of our techno-fuhrer, Steve Jobs. Apple doesn't even need a marketing campaign for the iPhone; it has us -- the mass media. In Jobs We Trust.

I glance down at my Motorola Razr on my desk. I feel so 2005.

Still, I pick it up and cradle it somewhat lovingly -- suddenly finding an odd kinship with it. I imagine it feels sad, belittled and inferior right about now.

I can relate.

+06:30

I get an e-mail from a friend of mine in Miami who's also in TV news. He's in contact with the producers at another network; apparently Ann Coulter is -- at this very moment -- stalking their halls, waiting to go live on the air.

Someone once again invited Ann Coulter to appear as a guest on a supposedly respectable news show.

I hate this business.

+6:55

The show is underway and, as expected, we're falling behind simply because we're sorely lacking people. Also as expected, the executives are acting as if we're at full-staff, which means that -- when the show inevitably collapses on-air -- it will be the little people who get taken out behind the wood-shed. Two go out. One comes back.

I'm motherfucking Zen goddammit.

+7:12

Our fill-in anchor has just mispronounced Mao, saying not "MOW" but "MAY-oh."

I immediately make sure he has a pronunciation guide for an upcoming story about Mensa (MEN-suh), as he's obviously not going to have the slightest clue how to say that particular word correctly.

+7:45

Our other anchor misreads a script -- inadvertently turning a story about San Francisco's mayor banning bottled water in all city offices to a story about San Francisco's mayor banning bottled water in the entire city.

Well, it certainly makes for a better story.

+8:20

Our main guest booker shouts across the newsroom, "I FUCKING HATE THIS PLACE!" rips off her headset and stomps away.

+8:30

Overwhelmed, understaffed and completely against the wall, we're suddenly commanded to juggle the end of the show in an effort to make room for a new guest. Possibly General David Petraeus? Terrorism expert Peter Bergen perhaps? Fareed Zakaria with analysis on the situation in Gaza?

Nope, it's the kid who put his cell phone number up on YouTube -- the one who's since met a girl online whom he's now asked to marry him after a mere month and a half.

Talk Talk was wrong. Life isn't what you make it; it's what your bosses make it.

And if they happen to be in the news business -- they make it shit.

My Zen is fucked.

+8:45

Eight hours and forty-five minutes after I woke up in a great mood, I'm trying to prevent myself from taking the entire newsroom hostage. My bosses walk out of the control room and into their respective offices one at a time -- saying nothing.

Not a word.

Not a "thank you" to the skeleton crew who pulled off a nearly impossible feat.

Nothing.

Finally, one of the show's line producers walks past my desk. I look up at him from my chair. "Say something nice to me, Alex," I say quietly. "Tell me we did good."

"You guys were great," he says. "I have no idea how we pulled it off."

Neither do I -- and I have no idea how we'll do it again tomorrow.

Or why for that matter.

It's Just Too Easy

NEW YORK (AP) -- Bush says he's confident Congress will pass
robust financial bailout plan.

Interlude

Thanks to Jacki Schechner.

Brownie, You're Doing a Heck of a Job

Although I give plenty of props to CNN's Campbell Brown for being the media's most surprising voice of outrage in this campaign, she was a little off-base last night in her rant against the McCain campaign's attempts to keep Sarah Palin safely out of reach of the press.

It's not that they don't have faith in her because she's a woman.

It's that they don't have faith in her because she's a moron.

Listening Post

This is one of those bands that quietly slips in under the radar until you wake up one morning and realize that you love just about everything they do.

It's Gomez, with How We Operate.

He's Clay, He's Gay, Get Used to It

Clay Aiken has officially come out of the closet and admitted that he's gay in the latest issue of People.

In other news, Djimon Honsou reveals that he's black, Dane Cook says he's a talentless douchebag, and Michael Jackson has confirmed that he wants to have sex with Clay Aiken.

(MSNBC: Clay Aiken Comes Out/9.23.08)

You're Fired

Wonder what happens if India decides to outsource their way of dealing with greedy CEOs to America?

(The Times UK: CEO Murdered by Mob of Sacked Indian Workers/9.23.08)

Take It to the Limited Vocabulary One More Time

I give up. I really do.

From the Associated Press today:

"(Bush) said he has been telling fellow leaders that the proposal devised by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson 'is a robust plan to deal with a serious problem."

If this particular quote sounds suspiciously familiar, read this:

(DXM: Boom to Robust, Redux/2.28.08)

I swear to God, the man has Down Syndrome.

Cruel Intentions

And I thought yesterday's column from Sam Harris really dug its claws into the reality of Sarah Palin.

From today's edition of Salon:

"'Sarah's on a mission, she's an opportunist.'"

"According to some political observers in Alaska, this pattern -- exploiting 'old-boy' mentors and then turning against them for her own advantage -- defines Sarah Palin's rise to power. Again and again, Palin has charmed powerful political patrons, and then rejected them when it suited her purposes. She has crafted a public image as a clean politics reformer, but in truth, she has only blown the whistle on political corruption when it was expedient for her to do so. Above all, Palin is a dynamo of ambition, shrewdly maneuvering her way through the notoriously compromised world of Alaska politics, making and breaking alliances along the way.

"'When Palin takes credit for knocking off the old-boy network in Alaska, it drives me crazy,' said Andrew Halcro, an Anchorage businessman and radio talk show host who ran against her in the 2006 GOP primary race for governor. 'Sarah certainly availed herself of that network whenever it was expedient.'"

"'The idea that Sarah shook up the state's old-boy network is one big fantasy, it's complete bullshit,' Halcro said. 'She got all this public acclaim for throwing people who backed her under the bus -- but she only did it after they became expendable, when she no longer needed them.'"

You know something? I'm pretty sure John McCain has a word for women like this. Damn, what is it? I think it begins with a "C."

Oh well, I'm sure it'll come to me.

(Salon: "Mean Girl" by David Talbot/9.23.08)

While we're on the subject, here are a few photos from last week's "Alaska Women Reject Palin" rally in Anchorage. It turned out to be the largest political protest the state's ever seen -- but of course most of the rest of the country saw none of it.

Tuesday is Recycling Day

"37 Dicks (In a Row)" (Originally Published, 12.10.06)

Alumni Visitation/Career Day, Pace High School, Miami, FL
December 11th, 2006
9:17 am

Uh, hey kids.

How's it going?

My name's Chez, and for some reason I'll probably never figure out, your teachers have asked me to come back here to my alma mater -- or at least the place where I spent a good portion of my teenage years sleeping -- and talk to you guys about your futures. Understand that asking me for advice on how to achieve success in life is like asking Ken Lay the best way to avoid prison time, but I suppose that if I can help one child avoid making the mistakes that I've made -- well, then -- there will be, uh, one fewer child who'll make the mistakes that I've made.

Don't do drugs.

Okay, so -- where to begin?

As it turns out, you've caught me on a hell of a day. Today is my 37th birthday. I can start by telling you that nobody "celebrates" his or her 37th birthday. Jesus, I had a brain tumor removed earlier this year, and I'm still not really "celebrating" this birthday. Don't get me wrong, I'm lucky to be alive and glad that the operation was a success, despite the fact that it rendered me a hormonal wreck who barely even recognizes his own face anymore when he sees it in the mirror. If I were a better person -- or at the very least more generically optimistic -- I'd be bukakkeing everyone I meet with gratitude and a general "Up With People" vibe 24/7; unfortunately, that's just not who I am, so maybe lesson one for you today is obvious...

People Don't Change

Kids, in spite of what Hollywood endings have led you to believe, people generally are who they are. Events can temporarily bend them and certainly alter their ways of thinking slightly -- sometimes even adjusting their core beliefs. They can learn from their mistakes and become wiser. They can adapt to their surroundings. For the most part however, the person you become after your formative years is the person you're probably always going to be. Being an adult doesn't involve changing everything about yourself that you believe to be wrong; it's about changing the things you can and learning to live with the things you can't. Someday, you or the kid next to you will go through rehab and all of that will be pounded into your head until you want to scrawl it on the wall in your own blood. It'll be the one thing you'll learn in rehab however that'll be right -- no matter who you are.

Speaking of which...

Drugs^tm: Making Bad People Feel Good (and Good People Feel Bad) Since 1427

A wise man named Marilyn Manson once said, "I Don't Like the Drugs, but the Drugs Like Me." Truer words were never spoken. If you ever wanted to know what drugs make you feel like, I can answer that for you: they make you feel like doing more drugs.

Chances are you're inundated daily with anti-drug messages warning you of the dangers of even thinking about lighting up that bong hit. Not surprisingly, this is nonsense. I won't broach the difficult question of why anyone should be allowed to have a say in what you do or don't do to make yourself feel good in the comfort of your own home, but I will say this: drugs are like anything else -- they become very bad for you the moment you let them consume your life. I happen to believe that there's a very big difference between using drugs and abusing them. I've done both at various points throughout my life. Admittedly, you need to be aware that doing drugs indeed can be like playing Russian roulette. They're enticing as hell, and you can wake up one morning to find that -- without even knowing it -- you've crossed a very dark little Rubicon. You need to keep this in mind at all times should you decide to even experiment. Anything can kill you in this world -- drugs can do it very quickly.

They can also do something far worse: they can make you wish you were dead.

While we're on the subject of death...

Career Suicide is Painless

I fell into a very good job at 22, which is a pretty impressive achievement for somebody who dropped out of college to join a band and basically figured he'd be doomed to work at Taco Bell until retirement age if his plan for musical world-domination failed (which it did). By 24 I had a gorgeous apartment in Miami Lakes, a BMW, and the title of Executive Somethingorother. It was all pretty kick-ass, until about six or seven years later -- when I realized that I hated what I was doing. Now, don't get me wrong. I fully understand and appreciate the fact that you're not necessarily supposed to love your job; you're just supposed to shut up and do it, get the check, and use it to pay your bills and buy things you want. I've known a lot of people throughout my lifetime who are fine with this way of thinking -- they're damn happy realizing that the end justifies the means. You may wind up being one of those people for all I know. Unfortunately, I'm not. Maybe it's the addict in me always wanting MORE, but I'm dangerous if I'm not being challenged -- and when I say that I don't mean, "Hey, let's see if I can put together an hour-long television show in twenty minutes;" I mean that I've always felt as if I were meant to do something other than bring you extended coverage of John Mark Karr's plane ride, the Lindsay Lohan OD-watch, or answer the important sweeps-induced question of whether or not your sock drawer can kill you (details at 11!). This could be the reason why I've managed to burn at least a few bridges at a good percentage of the places that have been unlucky enough to be saddled with me for any length of time. I've sarcastically referred to my idiotic managers as "The Brain Trust;" I've threatened to quit as a show of solidarity with people who were being fired; I abused authority when I had it and despised authority when I didn't; I've been labeled "brilliant and creative, but impossible;" In short -- I've been a fuck-up.

The reason for this -- now, finally, at 37 -- I realize, is that I simply moved up the food chain of a career which initially awed me with the size of its paycheck, but has never actually fed my soul in any way.

The lesson: forgive the stupid cliché but, life is short -- follow your dreams. You won't be truly happy or fulfilled otherwise.

Then again...

R-E-G-R-E-T (Just a Little Bit)

Ignore what I just said. Life usually isn't short. On the contrary, as someone once put it so well -- life is very long, particularly when you've made mistakes. I've screwed up so many times in my life that if I started listing them today, you'd be out of here just after Christmas at the earliest. Whoever says that you should live your life never having any regrets is more deserving of being pounded into paste than the guy who invented reggaeton. Misguided, idealistic crap like that is only proffered by early 20-somethings who are still using dad's money to buy pot from their RA and whose biggest "mistake" up to that point involved a night in jail for drunk-and-disorderly or flashing a Girls Gone Wild camera at Mardi Gras. As you get older, the consequences of the mistakes you make grow exponentially. The pain lasts longer. More people are hurt. You yourself run the risk of never fully recovering.

Make no mistake: the unshakable belief that you are damaged beyond repair is the worst kind of life sentence.

For God's sake -- think.

Case in point...

Marriage is Between a Man and a Woman... and a Man and a Woman, and a Man and a Woman

Isn't love great?

You meet somebody and suddenly the world starts to look and feel like the first few minutes of that good mushroom peak, with everything turning all colorful and warm and fuzzy, and you just want to lie down in it and let it pour over you and drown you in its infinite, wonderful bliss.

Uh-huh.

Unfortunately, there's no way to convince you during this heady experience that it is, in fact, a hallucination -- and that it won't be long before you're coming down and trying to pick individual pieces of lint out of the carpet with your bare hands because, well, "everything just looks so fucking dirty." I have two ex-wives, both of whom can be thankful only for the fact that my name is so unusual that there's a good chance they'll never have to hear it uttered again as long as they live. One of them used to refer to this rapturous early-relationship phenomenon as the "Chemical Bath." We all take it. We all sit in it for as long as we can, because it feels so safe and warm -- but it doesn't last. The true test of love then becomes how well you and the person you've sworn to care about can deal with the banality of day-to-day existence.

Going back to what I was saying about regret, occasionally your mistakes will lead you someplace wonderful; they'll lead you right where you were supposed to be all along. There's no greater proof of this in my life than the fact that I'm now happily married to a woman whom I can truly call my soul-mate. We've been through incredibly difficult times -- and incredibly wonderful times -- and we've never fully lost sight of each other. As much as I love her however -- and I do with all my heart -- I never forget that I got very, very lucky.

Unless of course you believe in fate.

And maybe that's the final lesson...

Believe

Yeah I know, I'm a cynical prick. I've been one since I was a kid -- one who insulted a teacher in front of his class then taunted him while he paddled me; one who was a nightmarish combination of smart and subversive. But Bill Hicks used to have a name for people like me, I think; he called us "Idealistic Misanthropes." I've got plenty of issues with the stupidity that I see around me every day, but that's only because I believe that things can be better. I believe in silly concepts like a love that never dies (now with a tiny drop of realism!) and a comforting inner-peace and a kind of redemption that doesn't have to come from a 2,000-year-old book or its supposedly divine author.

I believe that there are things in this world worth believing in.

And that's what makes life worth living.

Well kids, that's it for me. I'm gonna go now and let the guy from the class of 1994 get up here and tell you all about the joys of delivering water for Zephyrhills every day. Just duck if you see him reach into his pocket for any reason.

Oh yeah, and regrets or not -- the one thing I can say for sure about never growing up?

You don't have to worry about that mid-life crisis.

Shock and Flawed (Part II)

This just about sums it up:

"Over the past 30 years, Americans have been bombarded with sermons evangelizing for the free market religion of the Right. In the course of selling us on buying, the market-worshippers tried to convince us that all concerns about the most vulnerable members of society could be left up to the soulless, self-correcting calculus of supply and demand. Government involvement was an anachronism, regulatory oversight an impediment. The last few weeks have demolished that notion. In the battle over the proper role of government, the high priests of the church of the Free Market -- including Bush, Paulson, and the Masters of Wall Street -- have suffered a monumental defeat. So why are we allowing them to dictate the terms of their surrender?

(The Huffington Post: "The Bailout Plan: Welcome to Economic Shock and Awe" by Arianna Huffington/9.23.08)

And this one headline -- from that bulwark of left wing hippie thinking, The Wall Street Journal -- is just chilling:

(The Wall Street Journal: "Wall Street" No Longer Exists/9.23.08)

Listening Post

No matter how eclectic or unusual one's tastes may run, there's a reason pop music is pop music and, as such, I'll never deny my love for a great three-minutes and thirty-seconds of perfectly crafted ear candy.

So I guess that being said, I should go ahead and admit that I have a full-on schoolboy crush on Katy Perry.

She looks like a playfully sex kittenish Zooey Deschanel, she sings about kissing girls (sure it was more a gimmick than a song, but the thing was catchier than syphilis) and, best of all, she's a former born-again Christian, which satisfies that fallen angel fantasy I've had since high school and makes her even more of a "good girl gone bad" than the equally hot Rihanna.

I melt at the sight of Katy, so needless to say her new video -- as plaintive, heartbreaking and searingly suggestive as it is -- is pure bliss for your humble narrator.

This is easily the best song on her platinum-selling album, One of the Boys. It's Thinking of You.

Shock and Flawed

Hopefully you got a chance to see Naomi Klein this past Friday night on Real Time with Bill Maher. Klein's a damn smart lady who turned an insightful and chilling 2003 essay on the goal of the war in Iraq, called Baghdad Year Zero, into a book detailing what she's dubbed "disaster capitalism."

The theories she advanced in The Shock Doctrine -- that the right often seizes upon catastrophic events to push through policies that will turn a big profit for their corporate overlords -- are once again on display in the wake of Wall Street's implosion.

Read it and weep.

(The Huffington Post: Now is the Time to Resist Wall Street's Shock Doctrine/9.22.08)

Interlude

Cash Out

I wish I could find a way to make this funny, but I just don't think it's possible. Just make that check out to Bush and Paulson, leave the amount blank, and kiss your peace of mind -- to say nothing of your kids' future -- goodbye.

(The Huffington Post: Dirty Secret of the Bailout: 32 Words that None Dare Utter/9.22.08)

You've Tried the Best, Now Try the Rest

Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith, has written a damn good piece in the latest issue of Newsweek that details the religious nutjobbery of Sarah Palin and asks a question I've posited here more than a few times: What's wrong with being "elite?"

"Ask yourself: how has 'elitism' become a bad word in American politics? There is simply no other walk of life in which extraordinary talent and rigorous training are denigrated. We want elite pilots to fly our planes, elite troops to undertake our most critical missions, elite athletes to represent us in competition and elite scientists to devote the most productive years of their lives to curing our diseases. And yet, when it comes time to vest people with even greater responsibilities, we consider it a virtue to shun any and all standards of excellence. When it comes to choosing the people whose thoughts and actions will decide the fates of millions, then we suddenly want someone just like us, someone fit to have a beer with, someone down-to-earth—in fact, almost anyone, provided that he or she doesn't seem too intelligent or well educated."

(Newsweek: When Atheists Attack/9.20.08)

Take the Money and Run

It was so reassuring last week when, as our entire economy was collapsing under the weight of years of deregulation and unforgivable incompetence, Pennsylvania Avenue Phil stuck his head out of the White House a couple of times, saw his shadow, and quickly ran back inside -- guaranteeing 700 billion more dollars worth of taxpayer debt for the rest of us.

This puts the Bush "plan" into context quite nicely:

(Think Progress: Bush's Legacy of Squandering Taxpayer Money/9.22.08)

Wonder Twin Powers

A slightly adjusted version of a quickie from back in January. When the economy's melting down in cataclysmic fasion -- who ya gonna call?

***TWO MIN SPOT/"OLSEN TWINS EMERGENCY HOTLINE"***
DISTRIBUTION: National
EMBARGO: None
RUN TIME: 2:00
MIXED AND READY FOR AIR 08/22/08
KILL DATE: Indef.

***TRANSCRIPT***

(Fade up from black to slow dissolves of various pix of Heath Ledger, opening strains of Coldplay's "Fix You" can be heard. Dissolve to shot of makeshift memorial outside Ledger's SoHo apartment. Mary-Kate Olsen walks into the frame.)

Hi, I'm Mary-Kate Olsen. You may remember me from New York Minute, Full House, those late-night masturbation sessions you tell yourself never happened, or maybe a couple of Anorexics Anonymous meetings in that grubby little church at the corner of Fairfax and Fountain, if that was, you know, your thing.

My point is, you probably wouldn't think of me and my sister Ashley as the kind of girls you'd turn to in a crisis.

But boy would you be wrong!

By now you've probably heard that I got the first phone call from Heath Ledger's massage therapist when she found him dead earlier this year. That's right -- she didn't call 911, she called me, Mary-Kate Olsen. You're probably asking yourself why, right? Well, it's because she knew something most of America didn't -- and hasn't until now. It's a secret that the most important people in the world have always known, and it can finally be revealed.

I'm talking about the Olsen Twins Emergency Hotline.

Just one call and the full power of the Olsen Twins swings into action, ready to help you get through even the toughest, most publicly embarrassing personal crisis. Ever asked yourself how Paris Hilton, Halle Berry or Brandy can crash a car and leave a person near-death, but still vanish from the accident scene like nothing happened? How Nicole Richie can pop Vicodin and drive the wrong way down the freeway and yet not lose that valuable photo shoot in People? What the hell R. Kelly's doing walking around free instead of doing 10 to 20?

That's right -- the Olsen Twins Emergency Hotline.

Me and my sister Ashley are here to help you when you need it most, and we're proud to continue a tradition that's been passed down for centuries -- dating all the way back to the time of Christ. It was Salomé who founded the first service of this kind, using what would have otherwise been a pretty useless talent for pole dancing to get the head of John the Baptist -- the first contract murder by the way -- and actually change the course of history!

Cool, huh?

Since those early days, strong, sexy women from Mata Hari to Mamie Van Doren have carried the torch and undertaken the awesome responsibility of solving the world's problems when no one else could.

Oh yeah, you didn't think it was just Tom Hanks calling us at four in the morning from the Hollywood Hills after he'd just killed and eaten a hooker, did you? The Olsen Twins Emergency Hotline has been the secret weapon of world leaders for more than a decade.

Why do you think Bill Clinton wasn't actually thrown out of office? Uh, us. O.J. acquitted of murder? Are you kidding? We're guilty as charged on that one. The entire presidency of George W. Bush, from the 2000 election to 9/11 to now? You're welcome. The Cubs actually being at the top of the MLB power rankings? You betcha.

FEMA's response to Katrina?

Guess that'll teach Mike Brown for not calling the professionals.

I mean come on, you really didn't believe me and my sister got so rich off a crappy little sitcom, did you?

The bottom line here is that the emergency service that's been available to the world's elite is now being made available to you. Given that the cat's out of the bag after the whole Ledger thing, Ashley and I figure we may as well pad out the account in the Caymans, so if you've got a problem and no one else can help, maybe you can hire the O-team.

Just call 1-800-THE-WOLF.

That's 1-800-THE-WOLF.

The Olsen Twins Emergency Hotline -- because knowing where all the bodies are buried means you know where there's room to bury more.

(Phone rings. Mary-Kate picks it up.)

Hello?

Oh, hi Mr. Paulson -- yes, we've been waiting for your call.

(Coldplay music swells. Fade to black)

***END***

Listening Post

Avenue Q really opened up the door for puppet porn, and this full-on riot of a video just steamrolls right through it.

Here's new music from Morningwood -- Sugarbaby.

Quote of the Week

"This is a desperate attempt to gain political advantage using scare tactics and deceit."

-- Tucker Bounds, McCain campaign spokesman, referring to Barack Obama's criticism of McCain's response to the economic crisis

Feeling This

I'm a big fan of Travis Barker.

In addition to being a powerhouse drummer, from what I hear he's a damn good guy all the way around -- which is why the news that he and DJ AM barely survived a plane crash two days ago was pretty rough stuff.

Word is they'll both make a full recovery, but I can't imagine that suffering second and third degree burns is anything to just laugh off, so I certainly wish them the best.

For now, here's the mighty Travis Barker playing live with Boxcar Racer -- I Feel So.

Electioneering

Courtesy of Wonderyak.com: New ideas for McCain campaign buttons:

"McCain ‘08! Because Wal-Mart Wasn’t Hiring Greeters!"

"McCain ‘08! See What Happens When You Don’t Call Your Grandparents?"

"McCain ‘08! Liver Spots Are The New Flag Pin!”

“McCain ‘08! Because Rambling War Stories Make Great Leaders!”

“McCain ‘08! Be Nice, He Thinks You’re His Dead Brother"

"McCain ‘08! You want change? GET A JOB HIPPIE!"

"McCain ‘08! Because Social Security doesn’t pay me enough"

"McCain ‘08! You rotten kids and your music!"

"McCain ‘08! If you vote for me I’ll give back your ball"

"McCain ‘08! Experience counts, I’m as old as cosmic radiation"

"McCain '08! In a few months, we'll have 3 MILFs"

Sunday Sacrilege

Dope Fiend Theater

You know the drill: Swallow that blotter acid about 20 minutes after first putting it on your tongue, then sit back and watch the weirdness. (Deus Ex Malcontent assumes no responsibility for permanent psychological damage which may be caused by viewing the following.)

Saturday Morning Cartoons

If Muslims rioted in the streets over a couple of drawings in a Danish newspaper, a cartoon portraying Arabs as big dumb lummoxes and Napoleonic twerps who ride squeaky camels should really piss somebody off.

Not only is this clip a classic, and one of the most quotable cartoons in the Warner Brothers collection, it's worth watching for nothing more than Daffy's face at the 1:54 mark.

From 1957, here's Chuck Jones's Ali Baba Bunny.

Girl, Uninterrupted

I'm closing up shop early tonight and taking the day off tomorrow. Jayne's out of town, so I get to spend some very nice one-on-one time with the little kid.

Saturday Morning Cartoons and Dope Fiend Theater will still be posted tomorrow at their regular times, and I'll continue to publish comments, but other than that I'm hoping to get nowhere near my laptop over the next 36 hours.

See you on Sunday.

Smears for Fears

I wouldn't be breaking any new ground or divulging any closely guarded campaign secrets by pointing out that when it comes to conservative politics these days, simplicity sells. In fact, it's the only thing that sells.

John McCain and Sarah Palin know this -- which is why they're Jedi masters when it comes to stripping down each and every argument to its barest essential. They know that their audience doesn't want to be bothered with any of that thinking stuff; that's for Ivy League liberal pussies. So their rhetoric instead aims not for the head but for the gut. They figure, correctly, that they'll get a lot more mileage out of eliciting an instinctive, reactive feeling from voters than they will an equal amount of thoughtful consideration.

This is why, while Barack Obama is describing in detail what's wrong with the economy and what he plans to do about it, John McCain is howling about firing the head of the SEC (which a president can't technically do anyway). See, McCain knows: small words; simple statements; short soundbites -- that's what his audience wants. That's the mark of someone who's decisive. It's not that anything more substantive would necessarily confuse them, it would just bore them and might possibly lead to more questions later. And questions are bad. As far as the conservative base is concerned, if the basics of an argument aren't pointed enough that they can be distilled onto a bumper-sticker -- Country First! Drill Now! Bomb Iran! -- the argument itself is worthless.

Sarah Palin understands this as well, which is why for most of her political career -- a career that apparently validates her "Sarah Barracuda" nickname -- she's waived any in-depth discussion of policy in favor of populist gamesmanship aimed at endearing herself to voters. Not only does she, like McCain, know how well this works -- she knows just how satisfying it can be to her own personal ambition.

But now the McCain campaign, Johnny and Sarah, have launched an ad that makes the simplest and most obvious declaration of all -- a flat-out bald-faced accusation about Barack Obama that can easily be boiled down to a Neanderthal-friendly two words.

Of course they can't come right out and say these two words, so instead, they slip the clever insinuation in under the radar, twisting it into a painfully obvious subtext until it becomes something they don't have to explicitly say.

Take a look.



Time's Karen Tumulty hits it on the head:

"This is hardly subtle: Sinister images of two black men, followed by one of a vulnerable-looking elderly white woman.
Let me stipulate: Obama's Fannie Mae connections are completely fair game. But this ad doesn't even mention a far more significant tie--that of Jim Johnson, the former Fannie Mae chairman who had to resign as head of Obama's vice presidential search team after it was revealed he got a sweetheart deal on a mortgage from Countrywide Financial. Instead, it relies on a fleeting and tenuous reference in a Washington Post Style section story to suggest that Obama's principal economic adviser is former Fannie Mae Chairman Frank Raines. Why? One reason might be that Johnson is white; Raines is black. And the image of the victim doesn't seem accidental either, given the fact that older white women are a key swing constituency in this election."

What's also worth mentioning is that the Jim Johnson connection, while arguably much ado about nothing, is factual -- whereas the Frank Raines "controversy" is not; Raines isn't an advisor to Obama in any capacity -- economic or otherwise.

But, as Tumulty remarks later in her column, that's not really the point of the ad anyway.

No, the point is to remind NASCAR America about one thing when it comes to Obama:

He's Black.

I'd say that this is the final deplorable act -- the weapon of last resort -- in a desperate campaign, but that's just too fucking easy.

The important thing to keep in mind though is this: It's exactly the kind of strategy that's worked before (see Willie Horton circa 1988) because it goes for that gut punch in the hope of wringing immediate emotion out of voters -- particularly, the emotion that's most powerful and most useful in terms of exploitation come election time: Fear.

McCain wants voters to be afraid not of what Obama could mean for the country but of Obama himself, and the easiest way to achieve that goal is to goad them into believing that he's different.

Come to think of it, that would make a perfect bumper sticker too:

"He's not one of us."

In Good Company

I'd been waiting for someone to bring up the dreaded "B.D." words.

Adam Nagourney of the New York Times, who's part of John McCain's press corps, just did it:

"These days, Mr. McCain sounds less like his old self than Bob Dole, another Republican senator who ran for president in 1996, sounded in the closing days of his campaign — speaking louder or repeating statements that he thinks might be overlooked. 'The American economy is in a crisis!' Mr. McCain said. 'It’s in a crisis!'"

And we all know how that ended for Dole.

Anyone feel like speculating on which slightly embarrassing prescription drug McCain will wind up hawking on television?

Insider Out

Poor Pat.

(Gawker: Pat O'Brien Fired for Passive-Aggressive E-mail/9.19.08)

Spain and Suffering

From 23/6: New York comedian Katie Halper has some ideas as to why John McCain might've snubbed Spanish Prime Minister Zapatero.

McCain doesn't want to meet with Zapatero because...

1) the Spanish Prime Minister promotes the Homosexual agenda through his "curious" lisp and his legalization of gay marriage.

2) he doesn't want to encourage more Spanish people to sneak across our borders and steal our jobs, replacing hamburgers with paella, square dancing with flamenco and baseball with bullfighting.

3) he was unclear whether the reporter was talking about THE Zapatero or a zapatero, and McCain thinks it's a little below him to commit to a meeting with his cobbler.

4) he still hasn't forgiven Spain for the inquisition, which he remembers losing friends to, and which haunts him to this day.

5) as a skin cancer survivor, McCain resents Spain's pro sun propaganda.

Listening Post

I'm willing to overlook the fact that, for whatever reason, this song reminds me of Blue Oyster Cult's Shooting Shark.

Here's My Morning Jacket, with Touch Me I'm Going to Scream, Part 2.

It's the Thought that Counts

It's time to dispense with the political correctness -- no pun intended -- and talk openly and honestly about something that's been in the back of a lot of people's minds for some time, but which no one has dared truly confront. In this election, there's simply too much at stake for any relevant subject to be considered off-limits to the well-intentioned, especially not when it might have monumental ramifications for the future of this country. I'm talking about the kind of impact that could shake our nation to its very core and change the course of history -- and not for the better.

So we must ask the question:

Is 72-year-old John McCain mentally fit to be President of the United States?

Last night in an interview with Spanish-owned Union Radio, McCain seemed confused when asked whether he would be willing to invite Spain's Prime Minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, to the White House if he wins the presidency. Up to that point, the conversation had focused on Latin America and the anti-U.S. sentiment of leaders like Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales, allowing McCain to robotically issue a boilerplate soundbite promising to stand with those who support us and against those who don't. But once the interviewer mentioned Zapatero, McCain appeared to be thrown; he seemed, to anyone with ears and a brain, to not know just who it was the reporter was talking about. He responded by repeating, several times, the same standard exhortation: that he would embrace those who believed in democracy and "confront those that don't." He also insinuated that Spain is in Latin America.

Then he started talking about Mexico.

I could try to put into words the palpable feeling of unease that permeated the entire interview -- especially when you realized that the more McCain stayed relentlessly on message, the more lost he became -- but I'd never do it justice.

Listen for yourself.



I really don't mean to make light of this, but upon hearing that clip, my first thought was, "Dear God, he needs a nap." I found myself feeling sorry for McCain because it was late and the interview was obviously so taxing on him.

But then I remembered what he hopes to become next January -- the President of the United States.

The leader of the free world.

Listening to McCain's response, or lack thereof, to the reporter's question about Zapatero, one of two scenarios is possible: Either McCain really did confuse Zapatero with one of the other Latin American despots he had been talking about a few minutes earlier, or -- and this is actually much more terrifying -- he publicly and without pause thumbed his nose at a U.S. ally, a standing member of NATO that's contributed troops to both Iraq and Afghanistan. If the latter is true (which McCain's spokespeople are leaning toward, rather than admit an embarrassing mistake) McCain just took a blisteringly hardline approach to Spain's new government that not only defies even the Bush Administration's handling of the situation but stands against his own words from April of this year. (He told a newspaper that any problems between the U.S. and Spain should be put aside.) A diplomat -- someone with tested foreign policy experience -- simply doesn't insult an allied head-of-state the way McCain did, which would lead anyone with a clear head to assume that McCain didn't have a clear head when he answered the question.

And that's the problem.

Over the past several months, we've seen and heard dozens of what are insouciantly euphemized by the media as "gaffes," as if they were simply harmless slips of the tongue: confusing al-Qaeda with generic extremists; confusing Iraq and Afghanistan; confusing Sunnis and Shiites; claiming that troops in Iraq were down to pre-surge levels when they weren't; suddenly adjusting a major point in a story about his captivity in Vietnam that he'd told the same way for years.

Or how about this:

Saying that the fundamentals of our economy are strong on a day the Dow dropped 500 points, then attempting to correct himself by claiming that we're in a "total crisis" the following day.

Forcefully rejecting the bailing out of AIG one day then enthusiastically embracing it the next.

Lying -- yes lying -- over and over again, even when his words can easily be disproved by anyone with an internet connection.

Or possibly worst of all: choosing Sarah Palin as his running mate after meeting with her just once and apparently without fully vetting her.

Sarah Palin -- the former small-town mayor and half-term governor with no foreign policy experience who would become President of the United States should John McCain be elected then become incapacitated or be deemed unfit to lead.

That's why we have to be willing to talk about this.

We can't afford not to.

(Update, 9.19: No sooner had I spoken...)

A Call to Arms

"I need you to go out and talk to your friends and talk to your neighbors. I want you to talk to them whether they are independent or whether they are Republican. I want you to argue with them and get in their face. And if they tell you that, 'Well, we're not sure where he stands on guns.' I want you to say, 'He believes in the Second Amendment.' If they tell you, 'Well, he's going to raise your taxes,' you say, 'No, he's not, he's going lower them.' You are my ambassadors. You guys are the ones who can make the case."

-- Barack Obama, in Elko, NV yesterday

Sixteen Condoms

Great news for parents who worry that The Hills may not be enough to ensure that their daughters eventually wind up with a low IQ and an STD: Sex and the City for teens is coming!

Hack writer and badly dressed New York society cliché Candace Bushnell has announced that she's penning a series of prequels to her inexplicably successful book and TV series about the exploits of a hack writer and badly dressed New York society cliché named, imaginatively, Carrie Bradshaw. However, unlike the original Sex and the City, which was basically heroin for sad and loveless middle-aged women, The Carrie Diaries will focus on Carrie's life as a teenager -- making it basically heroin for one sad and loveless middle-aged woman: Bushnell, who gets to use the books to further her own self-mythology by pushing the notion that she was actually cool in high school.

As the "author" herself describes the new series:

"Carrie in high school did not follow the crowd -- she led it. It was there that she began observing and commenting on the social scene."

This will seem like a startlingly fresh and original concept to anyone who's never seen an episode of Gossip Girl.

Needless to say, The Carrie Diaries is already being made into its own television series.

Deus Ex Malcontent has obtained an exclusive preview:

Project Office Mayhem

Your assignment, as usual: Quietly put the following link up on every computer in your office, then crank all the speakers to full volume.

Mischief points: 733 (1,520 if you happen to work at McCain campaign HQ)

(The McCaingler)

Inara is a Punk Rocker

(Thanks to Manny for the cool onesie.)

The "A" Team

Since the elusive internet vigilante group known only as "Anonymous" has chosen to once again make its presence known, I thought I'd revisit something I wrote back in February of this year. This piece was never published here; it was exclusive to the Huffington Post. It deals with Anonymous's strange and somewhat gratifying war on Scientology.

Let me start off by paraphrasing a popular disclaimer: I'm not "Anonymous," nor am I affiliated with the mysterious internet group in any way.

That said, as a fan of The X Files I love a good conspiracy theory, which means that the recent antics of the shadowy entity known only as "Anonymous" have admittedly piqued my interest. In deference to those who just stepped out of a bathysphere, Anonymous is the name that's been adopted by a self-proclaimed collective of hackers and supposedly pissed-off average folks for the purpose of meting out justice via the internet -- and it's now declared war on Scientology. Two weeks ago, the group launched the first salvo in what it says will be an extended campaign to bring down the controversial "church"; it released an eerie video message attacking Scientology's tactics and promising retaliation for what it claims is a history of lies and generally sinister behavior on the part of the organization. To its credit I guess, Anonymous didn't keep anyone waiting: It launched a series of coordinated denial-of-service attacks on the official Scientology website almost immediately, effectively shutting it down. This was supposedly followed by prank phone calls and "black fax" transmissions to Scientology offices across the country.

At least two more videos have been released by Anonymous since its initial declaration of hostilities, one promising a global protest at Scientology centers on February 10th.

Needless to say, the normally confident Scientology big shots, who've raised damage control through vindictive litigation to an art form, suddenly find themselves in an amusing PR bind: If they dismiss Anonymous as a bunch of pathetic computer geeks -- which they already have, word for word -- they appear hopelessly arrogant; If they take the group seriously, they give it power; if they just ignore it altogether, they look stupid.

In other words, for all their supposed higher-brain functions, compliments of L. Ron Hubbard's questionable teachings, they can't win this one.

A group of internet savvy kid vigilantes has, to some extent, already beaten them.

The question some are asking though is whether Anonymous has crossed the line -- whether, in its battle to expose Scientology, it's engaging in the same kind of underhanded tactics it accuses the church of. The founder of one popular anti-Scientology website, Operation Clambake, has already criticized the group's supposed skulduggery, claiming that it'll only put Scientologists in a position to play the religious persecution card.

Maybe, but honestly -- who cares?

Almost since its inception as an organization, Scientology has been involved in one unscrupulous scheme or another -- at various points guilty of fraud, exploitation of its adherents for financial gain, and the illegal infiltration of government agencies. It's upheld the basic edict of its paranoid narcissist founder and set out to destroy its critics through intimidation, innuendo and impossibly dirty tricks. It was once called the "most lucrative cult the country has ever seen" by the Cult Awareness Network, a watchdog group which was eventually taken over by associates of the Church of Scientology. The whole thing, including the silly cosmology that serves as the basis for Scientology's belief system -- the kind of nonsense only a hack sci-fi writer could dream up -- would be laughable if it weren't so damn scary.

Anonymous claims that it was the Church of Scientology's efforts to suppress the recently leaked and utterly surreal video tribute to Tom Cruise which led to its decision to take action. Admittedly, watching Cruise -- looking not simply crazy but dangerously crazy -- spouting Hubbard's official-sounding acronymic lingo and making ex cathedra declarations of "no mercy" for psychiatrists is as mesmerizing as it is frightening. He almost seems like he's channeling his Frank T.J. Mackey character from Magnolia, demanding that we all "respect the crock."

The problem of course is that if you say any of this too loudly, the church will have no compunction about removing the choke collar from its legal pit bulls, which is what makes the mischievous guerilla attacks of Anonymous tough not to enjoy a little -- provided they never cross the line into the realm of genuine terrorism.

The bottom line: It's kind of satisfying to watch someone turn the tables on Scientology, using the same brand of furtive cloak-and-dagger absurdity to publicly shame an adversary that the church has used for decades.

If the Scientology people knew who to file a lawsuit against, you can bet it would've already happened.

That's why it's so much fun that they're left chasing shadows.

Listening Post

A couple of days ago I mentioned how the movie Doomsday put to very good use a couple of my favorite songs from the early 80s.

Well, that left me with a jones to hear those songs again.



Adam and the Ants -- Dog Eat Dog



Siouxsie and the Banshees -- Spellbound

Talking Pointless

From tonight's "exclusive" Fox News one-on-one between Sean "I can put you into a car regardless of your credit history" Hannity and Sarah Palin:

HANNITY: Senator Barack Obama yesterday was attacking Senator McCain for saying that the fundamentals of the economy are strong. Do you believe that the fundamentals of our economy are strong?

PALIN: Well, it was an unfair attack on the verbage that Senator McCain chose to use. The fundamentals that he was having to explain afterwards, he means the work force, he means ingenuity of the American people. And of course, that is strong, that is the foundation of our economy. So that was an unfair attack based on verbage that John McCain used.

In case you're wondering, "verbage" isn't a real word so much as it's a slang term. According to Dictionary.Reference.com, it's defined as:

"A deliberate misspelling and mispronunciation of 'verbiage' that assimilates it to the word 'garbage.' More pejorative than 'verbiage.'"

In other words, McCain was spouting garbage.

You Know the Difference Between "Anonymous" and a Pit Bull? Broadband.

I'm sure I'll have something more substantial to say about this tomorrow morning (when I'm not juggling my laptop and a crying baby), but for now I just need to get the basics out there:

There apparently is a God and he really, really does love me.

Why do I say this?

Because just when I thought the whole Sarah Palin fiasco couldn't get any more entertaining or personally all-consuming, my second favorite subject of 2008 just became a part of it.

For yours truly, this is the journalistic equivalent of adding peanut butter to chocolate -- like having OJ suddenly die by shark attack.

It's the goddamned Voltron of news stories.

"Anonymous" has hacked Sarah Palin's personal e-mail.

(Gawker: Anonymous Declares War on Sarah Palin/9.17.08)

(The Hill: McCain Camp Rips "Shocking Invasion" of Palin's Privacy/9.17.08)

Money Changes Everything

(Reuters: Shifting Positions: Obama Takes Lead in National Poll/9.17.08)

My Friend the Witch Doctor...

Alert reader Em was kind enough to pass this along:

(Times Online: Palin Linked Electoral Success to Help from Witch Hunter/9.16.08)

Every part of this story is hilarious/terrifying, but my favorite line has to be this one:

"Pastor Muthee founded the Prayer Cave in 1989... after 'God spoke' to him."

Man, I used to go to the Prayer Cave all the time back in the late 80s.

It was a great place to pick up Goth chicks, and Thursdays were 35-cent drink nights.

Bitchy Rich

It's such an unexpected pleasure when we're given the opportunity to get a theme going around here.

First up, McCain campaign spokeswoman Carly Fiorina -- who was unceremoniously fired as CEO of HP back in 2005 -- is now being banished to the rhetorical Phantom Zone after commenting yesterday, without so much as a hint of irony, that neither John McCain nor Sarah Palin would be capable of running a company.

I wonder if the McCain camp gave her a 45-million dollar golden parachute with her walking papers.

(The Huffington Post: McCain Throws Fiornia Under the Bus/9.17.08)

Meanwhile, one of Hillary Clinton's most fervent supporters and a member of the DNC is going to announce today that she's throwing her support behind the McCain-Palin ticket. Lynn Forester de Rothschild (and no, I'm not making that name up) says she feels that Barack Obama is arrogant, elitist and doesn't understand the problems of average people.


Forester is married to international banker Sir Evelyn de Rothschild and splits her time between London and New York.

If this were an episode of The Office, Jim would stare blankly into the camera right about now.

That said, you can go ahead and get on with your day. Mrs. Forester de Rothschild's comments aren't meant to be taken seriously by anyone and are for entertainment purposes only.

(AP: Top Clinton Backer Backing McCain/9.17.08)

(If you find the title of this post sexist in any way, please feel free to address your complaints here.)

The Money Pit

If this keeps up, Patrick Bateman's going to have to outsource his axe murders to India.

(MSNBC: Breaking News: Dow Falls More Than 200 Points in Early Trading/9.17.08)

Crowded House

"Overpopulation is a huge problem. But most people think of it as just being too many people. It's when you add up the numbers of people, how much they consume, and what kind of technologies they use, that it's an accurate statement."

(Salon: Do We Need Population Control?/9.17.08)

Listening Post

A lot of people thought that the Arcade Fire's Neon Bible was the best rock album of last year -- and they were absolutely right.

Here's just one example of why: the sprawling glory of Windowsill, live from Paris.

Celeb-Reality

I was going to leave Sarah Palin alone since her news cycle has pretty much run its course (at least until Troopergate explodes in her face or she says that Syria is something she eats for breakfast). Besides, watching McCain hang himself over the economy is much more entertaining right now anyway.

Still, I couldn't resist putting up this picture. It pretty much says it all.

And You Thought Ike Was Dangerous

Thanks to alert reader Jon Rey, who sent me this amusing little item lifted directly from CNN.com. (It's since been "corrected.")

I wonder if I can get one of those CNN t-shirts with that headline on it.

The McCain Mutiny

Watch this interview with a surly, paranoid and dismissive John McCain from MSNBC's Morning Joe this morning.

All he's missing is a set of ball bearings to continuously roll in his hand while he rants about who stole his strawberries.

The Bitter End

Back when people were first writing about my untimely dismissal from CNN, a lot of them sifted through this site looking for a juicy quote to use as the perfect example of why network management might have a problem with the things I say.

For whatever reason, more than one settled on this particular line from earlier this year:

"Pat O'Brien is the single most ridiculous human being currently sucking down oxygen."

Whether this was chosen because there's some sort of consensus within the mass media that this allegation is true -- or because they believe it's the furthest thing from true -- I'll never know.

But to this day, I stand by my strangely controversial statement.

And if you're not sure you agree, please allow Pat himself to once again put your mind at ease:

(The New York Post: Pat O'Brien's Manifesto of Compassion, Outrage, Bitterness, Narcissism and Jealousy/9.16.08)

My original column:

(DXM: O'Brien O'Blivion/2.12.08)

Tuesday is Recycling Day

"On the Offensive" (Originally Published, 10.15.06)

If you work for a large company, as I do, there's an excellent chance that at some point or another you've had to sit through that dreaded waste of time known as the Diversity Meeting. This typically involves a group comprised of you and your equally disinterested co-workers, sitting around a conference table littered with the remains of a management-sanctioned free lunch while being lectured by a highly-paid company lawyer about the need for each of you to never -- under any circumstances -- tell a joke which includes the punchline: "throw them a basketball."

In the television news business, a certain thickness-of-skin is not only encouraged but expected; most of us have the kind of gallows humor which simply isn't tolerated among polite society, and although I don't doubt that many other professions are wont to make this same claim, few others willingly travel to foreign countries to get shot at. Your average news junkie is of a pretty twisted breed. Years ago, a close friend of mine who worked for NBC in Miami put into words a truth which I'd always understood, but never quite knew how to articulate; he said it in the most perfectly economical and gloriously revelatory way: "The qualities that make you a good newsperson make you a lousy human being." They're definitely the same qualities that make you a God-awful employee. I for one have never envied a man or woman whose job is to manage a room full of bitter skeptics and cynics -- the kind of people who argue simply for the sake of arguing. True, there's idealism amongst them -- amongst us -- but it's usually the kind that's wielded with a fierce vengeance, as opposed to the more socially-acceptable brand of idealism which, to the average newsperson, brings to mind the doe-eyed, slack-jawed and completely out of touch with reality.

The fact is, if ever there was a business in which one is expected to "suck it up" when it comes to being offended by every little thing -- news is it.

This is the age of the frivolous lawsuit however, and the pretense of concern for diversity persists in any large company -- more as a way of covering the corporation's ass and giving its management a certain level of plausible deniability than actually hoping to see a workplace where every type of citizenry is represented and can live free from persecution.

Hence, the Diversity Meeting.

I personally don't offend easily, and I can never quite understand people who do -- which means that I'm a corporate lawyer's arch-enemy. It's not that I walk around the office making racist or sexist jokes or keep an open copy of Hustler on my desk; it's simply that I can tell the difference between a comment from a rational person who intends to offend no one -- even if his or her words might indeed do just that -- and a cruel remark from an ignorant fuck who not only doesn't realize what he's saying, but doesn't care either way. I understand that many will claim that it's this latter type of person for whom diversity training was created, but the fact remains that the focus of these classes is generally on the need not simply for anyone to offend, but for anyone to be offended -- as if a broad stroke can somehow lessen or even eliminate the myriad little things you can say or do that might send a co-worker into apoplexy. It's as if in the office -- as in life -- we're trying to create a world in which no one is ever offended by anything.

And therein lies the irony.

By preaching the gospel of diversity -- by insisting that every person's every little hang-up be respected and that no one ever be made to feel the least bit uncomfortable -- we create a completely homogenous workplace which is actually devoid of any real diversity. True tolerance of the uniqueness of each culture and personality would allow for the occasional insensitive act or rude comment. That's not what we're after though -- not these days; instead, corporations are attempting to stave off ludicrous lawsuits by opportunistic employees and in doing so are catering to the culture of victimization which now holds us all hostage.

Case in point:

Chances are you're aware of the curious case of Andrea Mackris; she's now -- as far as I can tell -- the wealthiest television news producer in the world. A couple of years ago, she was at the center of one of the most ridiculous non-stories in America. Her claim to fame rested solely on the fact that she was the recipient of the laugh-out-loud funniest sexual advances since the invention of the loofa: She was talked dirty to by Bill O'Reilly. Obviously, I won't defend O'Reilly; he's basically a Vaudevillian idiot with an audience whose median age is "dead." But it's safe to say that if he weren't a television host and were instead Bill the Burger King Manager, his lustful telephone propositions involving showers and falafels probably would've been met with a hearty laugh followed by a dial-tone, rather than a tape recorder and a multi-million dollar out-of-court settlement. Mackris saw her chance to cash in and took it -- ensuring that she need never work in this business again. Unfortunately, those she left behind are forced to pay the price for her opportunism. It would've been easy to simply go to management and inform them of Big Bill's sexual self-absorption (or even more to the point, just tell Bill himself to stick his falafel up his ass) but instead she got rich -- and what's worse, it's safe to say that O'Reilly's boorish behavior hasn't changed one bit since the Mackris Affair.

It's also safe to say that no amount of mandatory diversity training in the world would accomplish what public humiliation failed to; it would simply be what it always is: an ineffectual gesture meant to mitigate the actions of the responsible, allay the offended and project the illusion of actual, honest concern to all.

But hey, the free lunch is always nice.

Listening Post

If you're into trance/electronica, BT's 1999 album Movement in Still Life is probably one of your favorites.

From that, here's BT and Soul Coughing's Mike Doughty with Never Gonna Come Back Down.

Kicking and Screaming

Once more let me remind you -- it's 2008.

(SI: 13 Killed in Riot at Soccer Match After Player is Accused of Using Witchcraft/9.15.08)

Oh yeah, and in response to the news that African teams are employing witchcraft, the Arabic League has announced that its referees will now be ruling on soccer matches only according to sharia law.

Interlude

Thanks to Sal and Richard from the Howard Stern Show, for just a few minutes this morning CNN's Allan Chernoff wasn't the most boring man in television news.

Saturday Night Griever

Just when I thought this election couldn't get any dumber, Carly Fiorina shoots her mouth off and inadvertently invents an entirely new concept: Meta-irony.

(The Huffington Post: McCain Spokeswoman Calls Tina Fey's Sarah Palin Impression "Sexist"/9.15.08)

For the record, I always figured liberals were the ones with no sense of humor.

Kill Joy

So I finally got around to seeing Doomsday -- director Neil Marshall's largely overlooked killer virus cum action splatter movie from earlier this year.

Holy shit is it a blast.

From exploding bunnies, to barbecued British guys, to an overall feel that's unapologetically derivative of 80s b-movies (for God's sake, the titles are lifted directly from Escape from New York), to the best use of Adam and the Ants' Dog Eat Dog and Siouxsie and the Banshees' Spellbound ever, to Rhona Mitra (the no bullshit sexiest woman alive) kicking ass in a skin-tight black bodysuit -- this is the best shut-your-brain-off picture I've seen in quite a while.

Add it to your Netflix queue and make sure to crank it up real loud so it shatters the cosmo glasses of the girls next door who've gathered to watch the Sex and the City movie on DVD.

Read Between the Lines

An interesting take on the whole Palin-trying-to-ban-books thing, from one of the Huffington Post's most entertaining contributors:

(The Huffington Post: "Sarah Palin Isn't Not Not Dis-un-lying About Banning Books" by Chris Kelly/9.15.08)

They Shoot Women, Don't They?

It's the year 2008.

I just figured I'd go ahead and remind you of that before getting into any detail about a story in today's UK Daily Mail that's garnering quite a bit of attention. Apparently, thanks to a loophole in Britain's legal code -- specifically the 1996 Arbitration Act -- Islamic "sharia courts" are now insisting that their rulings be honored as binding under UK law. Basically what it means is that Muslims living in Britain can have their civil cases heard by religious officials and that the verdicts of those officials will be enforced by the secular British government, just like any other court decision would.

The problem of course -- aside from the very notion of a supposedly enlightened state legal system indulging age old nonsensical superstition, which is obscenely ridiculous at face -value -- is that sharia law is notoriously inequitable toward women. (And if ever there were a blatant understatement, that last sentence was it, considering that we're talking about a system of laws that still condones and perpetuates the brutal practice of honor killing.)

By allowing British sharia courts to decide, say, divorce or domestic violence cases -- which some reportedly already have -- the UK government is undoing hundreds of years of civil rights advancements and granting the unforgivably backward among its population the authority to supercede the very system of laws it holds dear and which should apply across the board to those who call Great Britain home.

At the risk of sounding jingoistic: You live in a country; you abide by its laws. You don't get to bring your own food to the party then demand that your host cooks it for you.

The reason ancient sharia laws are being given a pass, though? Or, ironically, the Jewish Beth Din courts for that matter?

Because civilized nations still see no alternative but to prostrate themselves at the foot of inane religious beliefs.

Now it looks like Britain will be in the unenviable position of having to enforce some of those beliefs.

Here -- now -- in the year 2008.

Listening Post

Whether or not you're nostalgic for the 80s, it's tough to argue with the fact that most of the music from that era just doesn't hold up by today's standards. Although some of it's damn good, what was considered cutting edge in the 1980s often sounds hopelessly dated when listened to 25 years after the fact.

But some bands stand out by, for the most past, standing the test of time.

Talk Talk is one of them.

This song is as fresh and powerful today as it was when it was first released in 1986.

Here's one of my favorites from the 80s or any era: Life's What You Make It.

Alas, Poor David

If you haven't read Infinite Jest, you're missing out on one of the funniest, cleverest, most original and most challenging novels you're likely to ever come across.

Released in 1996, Jest -- along with its non-fiction follow-up, A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again -- didn't make me dream of becoming a writer so much as it made me think that I shouldn't even bother, since I'd never have the kind of talent that David Foster Wallace did.

As a writer and an observer of culture and the human condition, few could touch him -- and he was always worthy of a certain amount of idolatry among those who would try.

I'm forced to say all of this in the past tense because two days ago David Foster Wallace was found dead in his California home. He'd hanged himself.

Only Wallace himself will ever know what was going on inside his head and why it led him to take his own life. But thankfully, his sly musings on the way the larger world thinks and behaves will stay with us.

Their impact will be, literally, infinite.

Laugh So You Don't Cry

Celebrity Spin

Last week Matt Damon blasted Sarah Palin, calling her hockey mom candidacy "absurd," and "like a really bad Disney movie."

Needless to say, Palin's spokespeople shot back unimaginatively by calling Damon just another one of Barack Obama's "celebrity friends."

This weekend, celebrity Matt Damon has been in Haiti, handing out sacks of grain to victims of Hurricane Ike and helping to repair some of the damage done by the storm -- while vice presidential candiate Sarah Palin can be found on the cover of just about every tabloid and lifestyle magazine in U.S. publication.

By the way, as a favor to Palin I should point out that Haiti is an island in the Caribbean -- it can be seen from Cuba. Cuba meanwhile is an island in the Caribbean that can be seen from Florida.

Florida can be seen every week on Cops.

Wasilla 99654

Remember to vote Tracy Flick for Student Council President!

(The New York Times: Once Elected, Palin Hired High School Friends and Lashed Foes/9.14.08)

(The Washington Post: As Mayor, Palin Cut Own Duties, Left Trail of Bad Blood/9.14.08)

Sunday Sacrilege

Dope Fiend Theater

You know the drill: Swallow that blotter acid about 20 minutes after first putting it on your tongue, then sit back and watch the weirdness. (Deus Ex Malcontent assumes no responsibility for permanent psychological damage which may be caused by viewing the following.)

Bliss

FAIL

Before:

"I believe in the man up there, God. I believe he will take care of me."

-- William Steally, Galveston, TX

(AP: Citing Faith and Fate, Some Choose to Ride Out Ike/9.12.08)

After:

(MSNBC: Survivors Beg for Help: Major Search and Rescue Looms After 250,000 Refuse to Flee/9.13.08)

Saturday Morning Cartoons

Not just a classic but a 1946 Academy Award winner, this Tom and Jerry cartoon features Tom performing the Hungarian Rhapsody #2 by Liszt while he and Jerry mercilessly go at it.

Here's The Cat Concerto.