TCP'S DAY OFF

I am in Chicago, and due to my poor efforts at scheduling my own travels, I have arrived a day early to my conference. Like Ferris Bueller, then, I am enjoying my very own day off. Here is a table comparing mine to his, as it were:

Ferris	Me
Cute girlfriend, played by Mia Sara, gets to come along	Wife, not played by Mia Sara, is pissed because she can't
Friend, played by Alan Ruck, wears Detroit Red Wings jersey and affects silly voice to aid in caper	I have no friends
Ferris, Sloane, and Cameron take Cameron's dad's Ferrari	I have a sweet Chevy Malibu rental car. Ok, not so much sweet as mind-numbingly dull
Ferris and Co. eat at a swanky French restaurant, giving the rude waiter his comeuppance	Um, I got a Jamba Juice...
Ferris snags a foul ball at a Cubs game	I saw Spiderman IMAX, and didn't even get the free soda I was entitled to
Back at home, Mr. Rooney breaks in and is maced by Ferris' sister, played by Jennifer Grey	They are doing an apartment inspection at our crummy temporary apartment. I hope our dog Chloe pees on them
The Ferrari is trashed, and everyone learns an important lesson about being young at heart, or something	I can't afford to have another rental car incident, and there's absolutely nothing to learn here, except that you should read the conference's agenda before you make your flight arrangements, or better yet, get an MBA and become a manager so that you can get someone else to plan your trips.

Anyone know how I should kill the rest of the day? Anyone? Anyone?

A.B.B - DAY 575

We're well under 600 days now until we choose a replacement for Doody Head. The race has become unprecendented in terms of the money raised to this point, as NPR so ably demonstrated last week through the use of the BeeGees song, "Stayin' Alive". Let's see where we stand.

REPUBLICANS

1. Rudy Giuliani - Rudy has firmly established himself as the front runner, a new development since the last time we checked in. His star has dropped a bit recently on revelations that his current wife suddenly "remembered" she's been previously married two times, and not the one she had told Giuliani. In addition, Giuliani's BFF, Bernie Kerik, is about to be indicted for various mob-related influence peddling shenanigans that occurred during and after Rudy's mayoral tenure. This stuff will continue to trickle in and eventually capsize his candidacy, but it ought to be fun while it lasts. I never did get to shake his hand at the NPRA convention. I'm sure he was disappointed.

2. John McCain - Second, but barely. McCain is steadfastly flogging the war effort, recently surfacing in Baghdad to claim that the surge needs just a little more time, and comically asserting that Baghdad is as safe as any American city, while strolling a market wearing a flak jacket and being escorted by attack helicopters and 100 soldiers. It's hard to tell if he really believes that any more, or if he's just signed on with the Rovian machine and is courting the hard-core right wing. If he believes it, well, I hope he's right, because Bush isn't pulling out. If he doesn't believe it, he's doomed.

3. Mitt Romney - The Mormon Thing is still a big problem, even as McCain and Giuliani are starting to decline in favorability. My take is, hey, he may wear funny underwear, but he isn't nigh on 70 and he doesn't wear WOMEN'S underwear. He's got the cash, so it's only a matter of figuring out a way to fend off the other Faith-Based guys. It's not clear that he can manage that, but again, he's got cash.

4. Newt Gingrich - I'm not sure if his "confession" to James Dobson helped or hurt. It got him some air time, which always helps, but the hypocrisy inherent in his statement was remarkably breathtaking, even for a Republican. He's making a nomination-winning move by courting Dobson. It'll take a lot more than that, though, and I don't know if Newtie has it in him.

5. Fred Thomspon - With a bullet. I'm not going to bother with the Wikipedia treatment on 'Ol Fred. You know him, you love him. He's a man's man, aside from the fact he's an actor. He isn't officially in yet, but his polling numbers have to be encouraging. Gallup even has him in third. He's not a Reagan conservative, depsite his acting pedigree, so I'm doubtful his candidacy will gain much traction. I get the feeling he'll say something stupid really soon, and be renegotiating his "Law & Order" contract immediately afterward.

6. Sam Brownback - I haven't heard a peep out of Sam since he announced. He'll always be the Dobson-type's fair-haired boy, but he's too obscure for the rest of the country, and from what I've seen, he has too much integrity to play the Rove game. He's kind of the Pro-Life version of Russ Feingold, which would be disastrous for his handlers.

7. Tom Tancredo - Again, unless his one issue becomes THE issue, he's not viable.

8. Tommy Thompson - He's like Fred, only without the charisma.

9. Mike Huckabee - He's the dark horse. He's not as extreme and strange as Brownback, and he's also not busy being a Senator like Sam is. I could easily see a scenario where Rudy, McCain, Newt, and Romney are all systematically disqualified by the GOP kingmakers, and Huck is the man left standing. His big problem is that Hillary would probably mop the floor with him in a very nasty, old-time Arkansas race, and Obama is too big of a personality in comparison.

10. The Rest - Chuck Hagel, Ron Paul, Jim Gilmore, George Pataki, Duncan Hunter. Of the pari-mutuel field, Hagel has the best breakout capability in terms of media coverage due to his anti-war stance, and Hunter is probably best-loved by the right.

DEMOCRATS

1. Hillary Clinton - Bill and Hill have been slashing and burning with a vengeance on the fundraising circuit, questioning the patriotism, brains, and sanity of any and every Democrat who doesn't back them. I guess this worked for Bill, but what Hill has to remember is that there won't be a Ross Perot to save her skin come next November. She'll have to get 270 electoral votes the hard way, and pissing off a big swath of her potential voters isn't going to help.

2. Barack Obama - From what I've been reading lately, Barry is going to run on a "Leadership" strategy, light on the specifics. It worked for Bush, but he was a white guy that most people knew and who had a rabid following among a very high turnout group, white evangelicals. Obama is a black guy, who people are still getting to know, and who seems to have a rabid following only among the relatively small, mostly non-voting media. Even so, I think this may actually work, if it turns out he's a great natural leader. If not, he'll be sucking wind down there with Kucinich.

3. John Edwards - After all the pundit foofaraw surrounding his wife Elizabeth's announcement of serious health problems, Edwards appeared to emerge more or less unscathed and even re-energized. It seems like more people applauded their courage and pluck than castigated Edwards for being an unfeeling Presidential Candidate robot. That being said, he's got problems. Even if Elizabeth's cancer remains relatively stable, having to deal with it will take the steam out of his traveling and fundraising effort against two already formidable opponents. It might have worked if he had anything to say on the Iraq war other than "Whoops, I blew that one!"

4. Al Gore - He hasn't started, but the train hasn't departed (to paraphrase Garry Templeton). And by train, I mean MagLev. In the past two months, Gore has won an Oscar and seen his views on global warming be accepted into the mainstream at a precipitous, almost global-warming-like rate. It also looks like he's on the melting glacier diet, having shed several pounds since the red carpet. I think he will run, and I think he'd win if the election were held in 2007. Unfortunately for him, he may have peaked too early. We'll have another cold winter in the Northeast, and everybody will start laughing at him again just as the primaries start. We probably deserve what comes after that.

5. The Rest - Bill Richardson, Joe Biden, Christopher Dodd, Dennis Kucinich. Biden will make some noise, and Richardson will rally the Hispanic vote somewhat, but these guys are strictly Cabinet material.

WORD OF THE DAY

DingleBerry (v) - To send an e-mail from your BlackBerry while taking a dump.

They sent me the proposal while I was in the can, so I DingleBerried my response right back.

My gift to you.

REHAB, HERE I COME!

I was going to post about Ann Coulter's sexuality, but I didn't think it would be right to mention transvestite midgets slathered in pig's blood and dog feces.

GOALS! GOALS! (BUT NO OTHER GOALS!)

Since I was in Phoenix, I decided to attend the USA-Mexico international friendly at the University of Phoenix Stadium (motto: Get Your Accounting Degree By Halftime!). I'm a soccer fan, and I follow the USA, and I know this rivalry is one of the better ones in soccer. Mostly, though, I went to see the Peter Eisenmann-designed stadium, which looks like it belongs in Dusseldorf instead of Glendale.

Upon arrival, it became abundantly clear that this was going to be a road game for the US. Mexican flags, Mexico jerseys, Mexico signs, giant sombreros, more Mexican flags, hair paint, body paint...I'd never seen so much green, white and red. It felt like being instantly fast-forwarded into the future of America. I must have stood out like, well, a white guy at southwestern US soccer game. The final tally was over 62,000, about 60,000 of whom had once lived or were directly related to someone who lives or had lived in Mexico.

I sat in the upper upper deck, which isn't a bad place to watch a game, because you can see the plays develop (at least that's what I told myself). I could look straight ahead and see the girders that hold up the retractable roof, which was open on a beautiful desert evening. The game was supposed to start at 7:05, but at about 7:07, the teams went back into the locker rooms after warmups. Finally, at about 7:30, they marched out with the usual cadre of little kids that seems to accompany every FIFA game I've ever seen. I think they just use the same kids every time. Those little bastards must make a fortune. After kickoff, the Tricolores had the run of the match for most of the first half, with the partisan crowd chanting "ME-XI-CO!" all the way. They had a couple of good chances that USA keeper Tim Howard easily brushed aside or that the Mexicans themselves booted away (odd note: every time Howard kicked a goal kick, the crowd shouted "Boot-O!". Weird). This was better than the US, which did almost nothing offensively in the first 45 minutes. Still, the score remained 0-0 heading into the second half. Then the fun started, and not only on the field.

I went down a large green river of humanity to the mens room, and as I was heading back to my seat, I noticed a melee starting to break out. People were clearing out for two guys who were wrestling and shouting. Then I saw one of the guys who was wrestling step back. He was a tall, 40+ white guy, well built, with spiky gray/white hair and a green shirt, and it looked like he had a headset on, as if we were an employee. He was still upset, shouting at someone, and then suddenly, whoever he was shouting at threw a full cup of beer at him. This made him go completely apeshit. He dove into the crowd and picked out the beer-thrower and started wailing on him. Since he was just about the only white guy in the area besides me, and this was too good of an opportunity for some in the crowd to pass up, two or three latino guys joined in and were beating on the white guy. At this point, there was absolutely no one between me and the fight. For a microsecond, I thought of stepping in and holding back one of the two latino guys who had jumped in late, but my better judgment prevailed. I heard a security guy behind me on a headset calling for the police, and then the white guy realized he was outnumbered and retreated back toward the concession stand where he appeared to be stationed. The latino guys all quickly dispersed, and I finally found a path to my seat. I saw the cops coming, but I don't think they were able to find anyone. The white guy was wiping off blood from his nose the last I saw him.

After I got to my seat, another fight broke out one section over. It looked like a guy with Mexican flag body paint was slap fighting with a guy in a white tank top, who also appeared to be latino. The guy with the tank top would come down the steps, fight a little, and then head back up the stairs. The body-paint guy would yell something, and then the tank top guy would come back down, looking homicidal, and they would slap fight some more, and then back he would go. This went on for a while, and then the same cops who were under the seats a few minutes ago for the previous fight finally showed up. They dragged the tank top guy away, and came back several minutes later after the game had started again and were questioning witnesses.

Back to futbol. The US continued to be outplayed early in the 2nd half, but then managed to finally get a couple of corner kicks. On the second corner kick, Landon Donovan served up a perfect cross in the box to Jimmy Conrad, who headed it just inside the upright for the first goal. That's when I was introduced to the lamest "anthem" in the history of team sports. "Goals! Goals! Goals!" is its name, and it belongs to the US Men's Soccer Team. Here are some of the lyrics:

Our hearts will never tire,
Our legs will see us through ...

GOALS! GOALS! GOALS!
For the Red, White and Blue!

Yeesh. Hey, whatever, at least we scored. Down 1-0, the Tricolores unleashed a torrent of chances, a few of which were turned aside brilliantly by Howard. Our Tim made a stunning save on one breakaway, diving out to barely redirect a point-blank shot. Howard and the US defense withstood the blitz and the team even improved their possession as the game wore on. As I was heading down the stairs in the 90th minute, Landon Donovan broke free and feinted out Mexican keeper Oswaldo Sanchez to bury the Tricolores for good. I am happy to say there were no fisticuffs on the way out.

If you ever go to Diploma Mill Stadium, park in the Brown Lot. It's on 91st Street, across the street from the stadium. It's absolutely enormous, they will bus you over in luxury coaches, drop you off and pick you up, and you can drive away without a traffic jam. I stumbled on to it because I got there early, but I would recommend it for anyone.

Anybody want to play some golf tommorrow? God, am I bored.

BY THE TIME I GET TO PHOENIX...IT'LL BE YESTERDAY

Yes, I'm in Phoenix, the capital of Arizona, and aridity (ask my sinuses). Why? Why not? I'm trying for every state west of the Pecos. It's a personal quest.

I had the worst Super Bowl experience of almost anyone in America, short of Bears fans who electrocuted themselves while making bratwurst dip. I watched the game in a no-service hotel (which is what this particular chain should rename themselves), in Phoenix, on a 15" very low-def TV, with a migraine, and the team I hate more than any other won. Beat that!

Prior to that, I went out and watched the gripping battle between Jeff Quinney and Aaron Baddeley for the FBC Open title at the TPC of Scottsdale. Not exactly Tiger and Phil at Augusta. Hell, it's not exactly Fred Funk and Scott Verplank at the Greater Greensboro. At least Baddeley's (usually young, female) fans are prone to wearing tight blue tank tops. If not for that, the gallery would have been sucked up into a vortex of white-breaded blandness. Badds won, long after I had left to catch the game.

Now I'm staring at 4 more days of self-paced training, which I could finish in two if I wanted to. Hmmm, do you think my company would mind if I buy casino chips in Vegas on my corporate credit card?

A.B.B. - 795

It's been a while, so let's check in with the A.B.B. field.

REPUBLICANS

John McCain - Big Mac veers ever rightward, becoming the Senate's spear-carrier on Bush's surge plan. Until he formally hires Rove and gets on the complete values-voter bandwagon, his evangelical support will continue to be tepid.

Rudy Giuliani - No incriminating photos of him in bed with men yet. I hear he will be speaking at the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association conference in March. Since I might (and the CEO's of several oil companies will) be there, all I can say is, good move! Maybe I'll do a blog entry after I shake his hand.

Mitt Romney - My Man Mitt is working hard to ban gay marriage in Massachusetts before he steps down as Governor. This is a canny strategy, since it helps him with the skeptical evangelical crowd, and will probably be completely forgotten by everyone else once the ban is ultimately defeated.

Sam Brownback - Oh, no, he might actually run.

Newt Gingrich - Oh, yes, he might actually run!

Tom Tancredo - Little-known outside the Minuteman community, he's pretty much a one-issue candidate. If that one issue should happen to be thrust into the forefront because of a terrorist attack launched from Mexico, for example, he might get some play, but otherwise, he's a non-starter.

George Allen - Toast.

Mike Huckabee - Still trim and ready to lose.

DEMOCRATS

Hillary Clinton - Oh, Hillary. Just when you thought you had a clear path to the nomination, a certain Illinois Senator vists New Hampshire. I'm not sure who is licking their chops more, the dark forces of insidious sexism or those of insidious racism, but since sexism is generally more acceptable, I'm thinking Hillary's in big trouble.

Barack Hussein Obama - Yes, I did list his full name, but I'm not a dark force of insidious racism, as far as I know. I'm just getting everyone prepared. This not entirely surprising newcomer to our shindig threw his sort-of hat into the maybe ring with his aforementioned sojourn northeastward. Is America ready for Obama? asks the newsweeklies. The correct question is, is Obama ready to have his hide ripped opened by the newsweeklies, bloggers, Gang of 500, the Sons Of The Confederacy, and Us Magazine et. al., etc., for the next two years? Or, does Obama know a damned thing about foreign policy? Both questions will have to be answered, and soon.

John Edwards - Edwards, Tom Vilsack, and Dennis Kucinich are the only official candidates right now. I rate all of their chances to be about as dismal, despite Edwards' significantly higher profile. Edwards has taken his anti-poverty advocacy to a higher level with the formation of One Corps. This is odd for a 2008 presidential candidate, since poverty is not even one of the top ten issues that people who are polled think is the most important. The top 5 or 6 are the disastrous occupation of Iraq and the related strains this has had on the larger War Against Extremists Who Use Terror As A Weapon or whatever it's called. In Edwards' press conference (in the 9th Ward of New Orleans to maximize the poverty theme) announcing his candidacy, he repudiated his own vote for the war as a mistake. So, why exactly should we trust you to not make the same kinds of egregious mistakes as President?

Al Gore - He's teasing us. We'll get Melissa Rivers to ask him on the red carpet.

John Kerry - French Toast.

INDY, WATCH OUT FOR THE DONUT HOLE!

So, 64-year-old Harrison Ford is gearing up to don the fedora again as Indiana Jones. Hmmm, what will they call it?

ROCK MY WORLD

I'm in love. Yes, with my wife (Hi, honey! Stop spying on me!), but also with NBC's "30 Rock". Tina Fey and Lorne Michaels have produced what may be the perfect sitcom, with the one-camera, no-laugh-track feel of "Arrested Development" combined with the inside-the-business vibe of "Entourage" and "Curb Your Enthusiasm". At heart, though, "30 Rock" is a post-modern "Mary Tyler Moore Show".

Fey plays the Mary Richards role, a single woman in the city, working on a TV show (sketch comedy instead of news), exasperated at being surrounded by so many egomaniacs and imbeciles. The Lou Grant character is handled with stunning comic brilliance by Alec Baldwin. Like Mr. Grant, Baldwin's Jack Donaghy superficially regards Fey's Liz Lemon with an "I hate spunk" contempt, but secretly he roots for her, despite what he perceives to be her endless weaknesses. Baldwin plays Jack (his title: Vice President of East Coast Television and Microwave Oven Programming) as if he's osmosed all the managerial wisdom of Jack Welch, Stephen Covey, and Sun-Tzu to become the Super-Executive, although perhaps he's also accidentally absorbed a little too much Bill O'Reilly. Filling the Ted Baxter part is Tracy Jordan, the star of Lemon's "The Girlie Show," played by another SNL alum, Tracy Morgan. Tracy is an out-of-control moron-from-the-hood, barely held together by his posse and the rest of the crew, especially the Harvard-educated Toofer (Keith Powell), his nerdy black comic foil. The Murray Slaughters in the cast are TGS staff writers Pete Hornberger, played by Scott Adsit, and Frank Rossitano, played by Judah Friedlander. Finally, Jane Krakowski plays the slutty Sue Ann Niven role of Jenna Mulroney, female lead on "The Girlie Show".

Like Mary, Liz is hopeless when it comes to men. Her on-and-off boyfriend, Dennis (Dean Winters), is a bridge-and-tunnel knucklehead who is so stuck in the 80's that he sells pagers for a living. One of the funniest scenes in the first few episodes is when Dennis, who had worked his way back into Liz's good graces after she had prepared a long list of his "Pro's and Con's", is caught by Dateline NBC's pedophile hunters. "THAT is definitely a CON!" Liz hollers at him. After temporarily dumping Dennis, Liz allows Jenna to drag her to a nightclub, where she is less than impressive. "You think she looks like Jessica Simpson?" screeches Liz at some investment bankers as she points at Jenna. "You could put a blond wig on a ferret and you would think it looked like Jessica Simpson. And besides, Jessica Simpson would think you were old and gross!" In another episode, Jack sets up Liz on a blind date with someone named Thomas, who ends up being Gretchen Thomas, a lesbian. "Do people often assume you’re a lesbian?" asks Gretchen. “I don’t know,” Liz replies. Cut to a flashback of her dikey gym teacher in middle school hugging her, saying "Don't let the other kids stop you from being who you really are," and her dentist telling her "You need to brush more, young man."

Aside from it's similarities to MTM, "30 Rock" also shines for its quirkiness. There is a running gag about Liz having a disastrous relationship with Conan O'Brien ("the tall, gawky red-head who always played the guitar," as Pete calls him), and Jack briefly dated Condoleezza Rice. "What are you wearing?" Jack coos over the phone. "Black dress, black stockings...oh, a funeral. Sorry." Kenneth (Jack McBrayer), the slightly dim-witted but always cheerful NBC page from Georgia has some classic moments as well. Sent on an errand to fetch Tracy's psych drugs, he finds the same drug store chain on all four street corners. "Frankly you were not very helpful, LaDonica," he politely tells the large, sneering black woman behind one of the wrong pharmacy counters. Later, Kenneth displays his clogging prowess to an empty Conan O'Brien studio. "You're a weird guy, Kenneth," says Conan as he leaves for the night.

At the moment, "30 Rock" seems to be fated to a shorter than deserved run. It was moved from Wednesdays to follow "My Name Is Earl", "The Office" and "Scrubs" at 9:30 pm on Thursdays, which might help, but it is still being endlessly and stupidly compared to "Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip", also on NBC and also about an SNL-type variety show. Where "30 Rock" is a 30-minute sitcom, "Studio 60" is a one-hour, Aaron Sorkin-written, multi-layered, talky dramedy, and so far very few critics seem to understand that. Here's hoping that NBC can find a home for "30 Rock", and that like the "Mary Tyler Moore Show", it's a long, long way to being taken off the air.

SUNRISE, SUNSET

I'm in Alaska! It's fucking cold! But I have the highest speed internet I've ever had. Weird.

So goes my latest far-flungingness. I'm in Kenai, to be exact, visiting another god-forsaken outpost of my company's empire. Whilst trying to avoid moose and re-learning how to drive in snow, I have been working on network security. Well, watching while some contractors work on network security. If I never again hear a fat guy with a crewcut talk about "back-railing", it will be too soon.

Twice in the last week I have been accused of looking like Steve Buscemi. I guess the dark circles under my eyes now have dark circles. It's too bad I can't find some 20-something hookers to spend the night with me and then call me "funny-looking" when later interrogated by a pregnant sheriff. Then again, maybe it's not so bad, considering the abundance of wood chippers in this area.

It's 5:32 pm and pitch black outside. Just saying.

BACK!

I just wanted to let nobody in particular know that TCP is back up and running, thanks to GoDaddy.com, and with absolutely no thanks to TimeWarner Cable and their silly $1 per Megabyte (yes, MEGABYTE, not Gigabyte) per month hosting prices. At those prices, Daily Kos would be spending more than the GDP of a small nation just to tell everyone that the Republicans suck, which may or may not be worth it, but regardless, he probably wouldn't be able to afford it. I guess TWC's attitude is, write your blogs somewhere else, you freaks.

In other news, I went to Hawaii for two weeks, then we bought a house, and now I'm off to Dallas and Alaska. One day, when I have more than 30 seconds of free time, I will tell (once again) no one in particular all about it.

CANADA, PART DEUX

As if you had to ask, I'm in Edmonton. That's in Alberta. Canada. You know, where everyone is much funnier. Earlier, I was standing in line at the ubiquitous doughnut chain Tim Horton's when two airport employees standing on either side of me launched into an improvised comedy routine superior to anything ever aired on CBS in the last 10 years.

Right now, I am waiting for my co-worker to arrive so that we can take his rental car to the hotel. Unlike my rather simplistic situation (American moving to San Antonio traveling to Canada), he is a Canadian living in Washington state moving to San Antonio but leaving from Seattle traveling to Canada. If we are fortunate, we can avoid being extraordinarily rendered to Uzbekistan. Either way, I am not optimistic about the food.

That's all for now. This Blackberry keyboard is about as ergonomic as a left-handed pair of scissors.

CHECKING IN

I'm in San Antonio! Before that, I was in Hawaii, then before that, San Antonio, and before that, Boothwyn, PA. All in a week or so. My brain is functioning strictly on instinct right now. Yup, the old limbic system is getting a workout, because the higher functions don't know where the fuck I am or what the fuck I am doing. They'll catch up eventually, I hope. When they do, I will regale you with really boring stories of my travels. Until then, I'm going to stalk and devour some wild animals, and fashion primitive tools out of rocks.

TEXAS REDUX

Hey, you! Yeah, you, who just followed a tantalizing link with the promise of seeing Bitty Schram, Karen Grassle, or, I don't know, Joan Steffend NUDE. My wife and I are moving back to Texas! BFD, you say? I agree, but it does mean there will be a brief period of time, from the time it happens to another time when I have absolutely nothing better to do and I finally get off my ass, when this here web log will be down, dark, not functioning, or "404", as the really nerdy kids say.

I'll have to switch from Comcast to RoadRunner at some point, and when I do, all the files from this site will be expunged. I'll probably save a bunch on my PC and try to transfer them to my RoadRunner account, but being the less-than-web-savvy sort, I'll probably screw it up. Nevertheless, I'll have the crossbowproject.org name, so I'll probably start anew with something different, if not any better.

So, see you on the other side! No, Mitch, that's not what I meant. Go away.

GIVE IT A REST IN PEACE

In this Sunday's Parade, Mitch Albom asks, "If You Had One Day With Someone Who's Gone...".

What is with Mitch Albom's morbid fascination with communicating with the dead? If you want to talk something dead, Mitch, how about getting in touch with your ability to write anything other than cloying treacle?

CRIKEY!

They say comedy is tragedy plus time. And it's been, what, two weeks?

So, with apologies to the Irwin family, and Bob Newhart...



This is Amalgamated Life Insurance, can I help you?

You want to purchase Life Insurance, ok. Name?

Steve Irwin...ok, occupation?

"Crocodile Hunter". Hmmm. Sir, before we go on, can I just say that what you just said, well, we in the Insurance game, we like to call that a "red flag".

Yes sir. We...no sir, it's a fine occupation and all, but it is a bit, well, you know, dangerous. Life-threatening you might say, and when your business is to insure life, that's a bit of a conundrum. Uh-uh. Yes. Oh, I'm sure you take a lot of precautions. I wouldn't...

Oh, I'm sure, sir. Well, sir, yes, I am here to help, so let's see what we can do. Now, do you by any chance hunt the little teeny-tiny crocodiles?

Oh, the big ones, I see.

"Man-eaters," you say. Well, that's not very helpful. Not helpful at all. Hmmm. Well, let's see. Where else can we go here....you probably don't hunt crocodiles exclusively, correct, sir?

That's good. Now we're getting somewhere. So, you mainly sit at a desk in front of a computer most of the time, and just hunt giant, man-eating crocodiles only part of the time, and...

Oh, I see. You also work with snakes. I thought you meant something else. Again sir, let me say that snake-handling is not looked at favorably at the corporate headquarters. No. Not really sir. Mmm-mmm. Yes. Oh, I am doing my best here, sir, but, you know, you're making it very difficult.

Now, this is probably a silly question, but these snakes...are they, by any chance, you know, poisonous?

I said I thought it was a silly question...Ok, well, sir, so far, things aren't looking too great, but we do have some high-premium policies you may be interested in, you know, assuming you don't, like, literally swim in shark-infested waters on a regular basis...um, sir, you don't swim in shark-infested waters on a regular basis, do you?

Sting rays? Oh, that shouldn't be a problem...

A.B.B. - 834

Just in case anyone was wondering.

Let's have a look at the contenders.

REPUBLICANS

John McCain - He continues to dance with what brung him, hoping that Karl Rove will join his campaign to give it that winning sheen, or a sheen of something anyway. He asked General Pace some tough questions at the Iraq hearings a few weeks ago, which will help him with the JonStewartinistas.

Mitt Romney - The Stormin' Mormon got a lot of kudos for taking over the Big Dig collapse investigation. I'm partial to Mitt. Religious enough for the wackos, fairly young, and above all, refreshingly competent.

George Allen - Macaca! Jim Webb is catching up in the Virginia Senate race, thanks to that vaguely racist epithet. That should be his campaign slogan. George Allen: Only Vaguely Racist!

Mike Huckabee - Not much to report. He's still looking pretty buff, for him.

Sam Brownback - He wasn't on my original list, but he seems to be mentioned by everybody else. All I can say is, please oh please God, spare us.

Newt Gingrich - I dismissed him out of hand, and I still do, but I hope he runs just for Harry Shearer's sake.

Bill Frist - Terry Schiavo. Did I mention Terry Schiavo?

Rudy Giuliani - I'm only including him because he hasn't been caught having anal sex with Boy George...yet.

DEMOCRATS

Hillary Clinton - Triangulating her way to an easy Senate win in 2006, Ms. Rodham manages to throw Joe Lieberman under the campaign bus and co-sponsor the anti-flag-burning amendment within a few weeks of each other. Nice!

Mark Warner - That other Virginia dude gets a tooth-baring cover photo (oh, and a mostly favorable write-up) in the New York Times Magazine, but generates little other major buzz. He's my not-Hillary #1 so far.

Al Gore - As I mentioned, I called his resurrection. I didn't even know he was doing a movie! I haven't seen it yet, but I don't have to go into an air-conditioned theater to know that it's too damn hot outside. Al's only problem is that he's probably a better documentarian than President.

Russ Feingold - He'll never get the nomination, but I hope he runs. Being that close to actual integrity might help the other Democrats. I would say that it would help the Republicans, too, but Jesus himself couldn't help those guys.

John Kerry - Just stop talking in public, John. Please.

John Edwards - Handsome guy, talks about Two Americas. Whatever.

Joe Biden - Nice job with the South Asian vote, Joe.

THE BATTLE HYMN OF THE THEOCRACY?

In a press briefing yesterday, Donald Rumsfeld said, "It (Iraq) certainly isn't like our Civil War."

TOP TEN THINGS IRAQIS IN 150 YEARS FROM NOW WILL MISS OUT ON BECAUSE THEIR CIVIL WAR ISN'T LIKE OURS

10. Guys in overalls driving pickup trucks with Sunni flags

9. Comparative phrase "like Zarqawi through Anbar"

8. Scene of Fallujah burning in "Gone With The Sand"

7. Jazz. But they probably will have some kind of Qanun-based variation of the Blues

6. Maliki's Birthday Holiday

5. Schoolchildren having to memorize the Abu Ghraib Address

4. Re-enactments of suicide bombings

3. "Uncle Mahmoud's Cabin"

2. The Ku Klux Kaliphate

And the number one thing Iraqis 150 years from now will miss out on because their Civil War is not like ours:

1. Reconstruction

LIBERTY CALL

In the continuing series, "iPod Comes Alive", my wife and I journeyed to Manhattan last Friday to see Edie Brickell and New Bohemians perform at SummerStage in Central Park. Since Edie was playing at 7 pm, we decided to make a day of it by reserving tickets to an afternoon viewing of the Statue of Liberty. Neither of us had ever been, and there's no telling when somebody with a Bin or an Al- in his name will force the authorities to close it down again.

We boarded the NJ Transit train at 30th Street Station (motto: "Tickets sold only in that machine over there with the long line.") at about 10 am, and arrived at Penn Station at about 1:00 pm. Our pass for the Statue was between 1:30 and 4:30, and we thought that meant that we had to get onto Liberty Island by 1:30, so we booked it to the 1 train to get down to Battery Park. When we got there, the ferry line snaked almost out of the park, and it looked like we would never make it on time. The will call booth was keeping our tickets, and the woman there said that as long we got to the Statue after 1:30 and before 4:30, we should be able to get in. That was the first time since we left the house that we felt like we hadn't screwed up by leaving too late, and we were finally able to relax a bit. On line for the ferry, I bought a "large" hot dog from a vendor, which now apparently means two hot dogs in one bun. New York, always innovating!





The ferry goes first to Liberty Island and then on to Ellis Island. I guess they want you to get into the spirit of the thing by packing the boat with every kind of foreigner imaginable, and they do a fine job. The weirdest part of the Statue experience are the GE scanners in the security tent that shoot you with puffs of air. At the time, I figured they were screening for ticklishness (I'm a positive). It turns out, the puffs are designed to dislodge minute parts of explosives, which are then analyzed. Apparently it can also screen through clothing. I'm glad I wore clean underwear.





Once inside the pedestal, you get the standard Park-Ranger-who-thinks-he's-a-comedian tour. You can see the original torch, and a copy of Lady Liberty's face and right foot in the original copper cast. You can take an elevator to the top of the pedestal, where more wacky, cut-up Park Rangers are waiting to tell you about the iron superstructure, which you can see through some heavy plexiglass on the ceiling. That's as far as you can go. I was disappointed, but not surprised.






We ate an horrendous fried-everything dinner on the island, and then went to hop a ferry back to Manhattan. Right at that moment, an angry-looking thunderstorm came up over Staten Island heading right for us. Appropriately enough, masses of tired, poor people huddled under the flimsy awning on the ferry dock, yearning merely to keep breathing at all as we watched the sky unleash its fury. Lady Liberty became the world's most spectacular lightning rod for a few minutes until the storm blew over. By the time we got back to Battery Park, the rain had stopped and the air could only be cut with a chainsaw. We found the Bowling Green subway station and took the mercifully air-conditioned 5 train up to Grand Central, and switched to the 6 to 68th Street and Lexington. Inside the park, we only had to negotiate one homeless guy under a bridge. My wife was in full panic mode about that time. Finally, we found the stage, and saw the line to get in. Somebody was doing a sound check, and they were holding us out until they finished. We found out later that the weather had postponed everything about a half-hour.

Inside the venue, there is no seating right in front of the stage, only a ratty astroturf rug. There are bleachers, but they are too far away to actually see anything. Even though I noticed that EVERYONE ELSE had brought a beach towel, or flattened cardboard box, or SOMETHING to sit on, I decided to just plunk down on the astroturf about 10 feet from the stage. That's when I felt the unmistakable feeling of moisture on my ass. Well, the underwear was still clean anyway, I guess. I got up, and my wife had to stifle herself not to convulse into laughter. I had a giant rust-colored wet stain on my shorts, which I had to try to cover up with my shirttail the ENTIRE REST OF THE NIGHT. Nice. I went and stood by the stage with my camera while my wife tried to stake out a bleacher seat. After what seemed like an eternity of me standing there with my wet ass facing the crowd while about 20 people futzed around on stage with cables, a 30-something African-American woman with a pot-belly wearing what can only be described as a genie costume came out and introduced the first act, a local band called Pablo. Pablo had won the Starbucks "Avant Grande" contest, whatever the hell that is. They looked like a bunch of Williamsburg hipsters, except that for some reason, somebody's dad was playing harmonica. The keyboard player stood waiting for his part of the song with a lit cigarette in his hand and a look of complete boredom. He got his comeuppance when his microphone started giving feedback every time he tried to sing into it. So much for the 20 guys futzing. They finished their set and the dozen or so people they invited to the gig cheered them off the stage.

Next, after more endless cable plugging and unplugging, came 17-year-old chanteuse Sonya Kitchell. She's been described as part Janis Joplin, part Joni Mitchell. That would actually make her Jani Jitchell, but I digress. Her band appeared to have only recently started shaving, but only their faces. She's a talented singer, but how much soul can you have at 17? More than Taylor Hicks, certainly, but that's not saying a lot. She did about a 45-minute set of advanced teen-angsty, atmospheric pop songs. I couldn't really follow the lyrics through all her low-pitched growling, and the continued poor performance of the sound system. Besides, I was still pre-occupied with the giant wet stain on my ass and the fact that I had been on my feet for the last two hours mostly watching Teamsters pull cables.





I left the front of the stage and located my wife, who was sitting near a tree on a dry sidewalk because the bleachers were also wet. We waited through another round of cable-pulling, and then the Afro-Genie lady came out to bring on Edie and the boys. With darkness decsending and the crescent moon rising just like on the cover art, they quickly reeled off three songs from their debut CD "Shooting Rubberbands At The Stars": "Keep Coming Back", "The Wheel", and "Nothing". Amazingly, the sound system had healed itself (maybe it was just the Indians and not the arrows), and they sounded FANTASTIC. Kenny Withrow on lead guitar is a genius, and Percussionist John Bush ("no relation", Edie said) was a madman, playing three kinds of bongos and a gong inside of a beer cooler. Edie, who was in marvelous voice, was a dervish, joyously writhing her still-skinny frame and flipping her long, frizzy mane all around her head. She even struck her familiar leaned-back, cross-legged pose made famous in the old videos. They mixed in a few songs from the new album, "Stranger Things", with "10,000 Angels" and "Strings Of Love" from "Ghost Of A Dog". The last song we heard was "Spanish Style Guitar", which is off "The Live Montauk Sessions" disc that they self-released. Edie herself even picked up an ax on that one.





Since it was 9:30, and we live in the suburbs of the "Sixth Borough", we regretfully had to be getting back. We walked out into the park with the band still playing in the background, trying to assiduously stay under the street lights and near the trotting horses of the hansom cabs, lest any wilding be on anyone's mind. I guess Giuliani got rid of the wilders, or maybe they are all investment bankers now. We only saw about three people walking in the park all the way out to 5th Avenue. We took the 5 train back to Grand Central, and switched to the Shuttle to Times Square, which is one of the most useless trains in history. I think only tourists ever ride it. I saw a lot of Yankees jerseys on there, probably being worn by upstaters making a day-trip to the Stadium. Finally, we made it back to Penn Station via the 1 train, where we lucked out and just caught the 10:40 NJ Transit train back to Trenton. We hit Boothwyn at about 1:30 am, and our long day was over. Man, was it ever good to take those shorts off.

RE-MEET THE METS

That's it. I quit.

Not blogging! I could never quit blogging! Well, I could, and did, but only for a summer. Then it came back, like herpes. Quite a bit like herpes, actually.

I mean, I quit the Phillies. They are officially out of my life. Thanks, Bill Giles, for showing me how completely adrift you and your fellow band of senile old coots who own Phillies, L.P. really are. "He was trying to help her." Yeah, help her go to the emergency room. Fuck you, Bill, Dave, John, and even old Mrs. What's Her name in Florida.

I am henceforth, as I was born, a New York Mets fan. And what good timing! The Amazin's are 12 games clear in the NL East, heading to a possible showdown with the Yankees in Subway Series II: This Time, Maybe We Win Two Games. They have my favorite position player, David Wright, and my favorite pitcher, Billy Wagner (just kidding about Billy). They have a GM with some cojones, and an ownership group who, get this, actually considers winning to be not only feasible, but a regular goal towards which to strive. They don't call them Amazin's for nothing.

I can watch the Mets on MLB.tv any time I want. If I'm in the car, I can pretty much get 660 WFAN most nights. If the radio reception becomes an issue, I can always get XM Radio installed in my car. And Shea is a mere two hours drive up the Turnpike, or a two-and-a-half-hour train ride. Plus, they are building a nice new park in the Shea parking lot, so I have that to look forward to. And, let's face it, the Mets are MY TEAM. I suffered through 22 mostly miserable seasons, with ownership that often made the Phillies' bunch look like Warren Buffett. I only abandoned the Mets out of necessity when I moved to Illinois in the quaint, old-fashioned days before the Internet (1989). It's time. Time to come back home.

So, go ahead, call me a front-runner. It beats the hell out of being called a Phillies fan.