Meet Garth Richardson.

Garth was the senior Canadian.

A viciously competitive ping pong virtuoso with a devastating serve, a pronounced paunch and male pattern baldness.  Glasses and a baseball cap with some hockey logo.  I don’t believe I ever saw him lose.  He sure cleaned my clock whenever I was bored enough to have my ass handed to me.  I grew up with a ping pong table.  I was lucky to return his goddamn knuckle ball serve.

Talented, a big heart, funny, friendly and smart.  He was quite good to me.  You’ll see.

An immensely accomplished record producer and engineer who managed to eclipse his legendary father, Jack Richardson of Nimbus 9, The Guess Who and “These Eyes”, in the universe of recording arts.  He produced the first Rage Against The Machine record, arguably their best.  Good enough for me.  Always on the curve and usually ahead of it.  A class act and a good guy.

Years later, while I was mixing a project at the the deceased Frank Zappa’s house, Dweezil Zappa revealed to me how Tom Morello managed the signature  rhythm riff on “Killing In The Name”.  The second half of it was a full octave lower in the same key.  I’d always assumed it was a punch after he’d tuned down, but Morello did it with an octave pedal.  Duh.

Garth looked at me on the morning of the first day of the first gig I ever did with him and said in all seriousness, “Mikey, if you do nothing else on this session, I want you to set it up so that every time I hit rewind or stop on the multitracks, the audio from the hockey game comes up.”

I ran a noisegate off the sync head from the smpte time code track on 24, consistent amplitude and frequency.  The sync head gave me fifty five milliseconds of lead time before the playback head.  Enough to drive a truck through.  I patched into the trigger of a Drawmer gate, set it to duck, and brought it up on a fader at the end of the console near the patch bay so I could have access to it.  I ran the hockey audio through the gate, then I strapped another gate across the insert to close while the mix was playing with the same trigger off a mult.  Kinda the same chain but in reverse.  I still took care to mute it when we were printing.

Took me about five minutes to figure out and implement.

Garth smiled and asked for it in stereo.

I fucked up a lot but I think Garth and his engineer Joe liked me after that very first gig.  These guys were self sufficient.  They didn’t need a genius, just somebody to change the linens and help flip the mattress.

What I learned from Garth was largely by example.  Etiquette and politics.  He was a producer and I was an assistant to his engineer, Joe Barresi.  Joe has become a star in his own right: The Melvins, Queens of The Stoneage, Kyuss, Tool and Bad Religion.  Joe was a soft spoken and understated funny motherfucker.  At one point I was dating a redhead and showed him a picture.  His eyes lit up and he smiled.  “Firepie” he said softly through a slight grin. I’m grateful to have known and worked with him.  We were born on the exact same day, 02/07/65.  Technique and chops I stole from Joe.  Class and manners too.

Garth always had an exceptional ear for good engineers.  Stan Katayama and Joe Barresi for example.

Garth has a fairly pronounced stutter that seemed to come and go at random.  In my mind’s eye I see him jolly and hardworking.  Very funny and somewhat paternal, even to Randy and Bill.  He liked being Dad.  On holidays there was always whiskey for your coffee.

We pulled an all-nighter in B once, we were firing and printing snare samples and kept having phase problems between the original and the sample.  I remember looking at the the scope and seeing it 180 degrees out on one hit and almost phase locked on the next.  Frustrating.  We could hear it plain as day.

Around midnight Garth ordered roasted garlic pizza from this place up in Laurel Canyon.  He knew exactly what he was doing.  As soon as the pie arrived, he said with a smirk, “Mikey, I apologize in advance”.  It was delicious.  For a solid five hours we carpet bombed the control room with a prodigious volume of pungent garlic flatulence that had the runners entering with Lysol and makeshift face masks to clean up.  We joked about the air changing from blue to green.  We didn’t dare light a match for fear of combustion of the copious amount of methane.  An air locked control room and there were complaints from the hallways.  We  giggled with adolescent glee and morbid satisfaction.

His production credit often reads “GGGarth Richardson, a self deprecating nod at his stutter.

There was a young woman named Patricia Sullivan with a speech impediment somewhat more severe than Garth’s.  I called her Miss Ricia.  She was a mastering apprentice.  A different kind of engineering sorcery that suited her demeanor better than the testosterone fueled boys club of wanna be console jockeys.  Beautiful inside and out, she possessed a serenity and wisdom that I often wondered at.  She was calm and peace in an absolute maelstrom.

My point is this, an incidental thing like a stammer becomes pretty much invisible in the presence of of such genuine humanity.  It wasn’t until I remembered Garth’s affliction that I was reminded of Miss Ricia’s.  I was only reminded of Garth’s when I remembered his album credits.  When I hear his voice in my head today, I don’t hear the stutter.

I’m not sure by what authority, but Garth made me an honorary Canadian at one point.  He teased me that my assistant engineer credit on an the L7 record, “Hungry For Stink” would be either Demo King or Donut King.  I dared him and was a little disappointed to see my actual name spelled correctly when it was released.

These guys, these Canadians, Randy, Garth and Bill, all still inhale and exhale music, engineering and the production thereof everyday.  Garth has a school with producing legend Bob Ezrin (Pink Floyd’s “The Wall”), Nimbus School of Recording Arts.  Randy and Bill have very successful careers and are making God Thumping good sound as you read this.

I have much more to say about Garth, but this chapter is done.

Next up is the story of how Garth was able to prevent me from beating the shit out of Eddie Kramer in front of Luther Vandross, Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons while I was actually engineering on a KISS record.

Drinks for my friends.

I’m not gonna look this up because it’s stuck in my head.  Some 75% of Americans want health care reform anon.

This is about as popular an issue gets in America, as at least a quarter of us are retarded, misguided, rich or willfully ignorant.  They kill horses don’t they?

I love that phrase.  Willfully ignorant.  I made it up for my own self but it’s a likely coupling so I’m sure I’d read it somewhere, then one day I summoned and it became mine.  Non exclusive of course.

Yet congress and their convoluted committees scramble, and media is so complicit it’s pissing kerosene onto the politics thereof as opposed to shining the spot on the humanity of it.  How important it is for the individual as well as the whole.  An equitable system in the world’s richest country and the only one without it.  The promise of helping the economy and by giving the middle class a little more discretionary cash by simply reducing what it costs to protect a family.

Now that’s a tax cut.

Taxing the rich.  Yep, they that had largess heaped upon by the last administration might now be called upon to put a little paper in the pot instead of nickels and slugs.  Oh my God it’s socialism!  You people are killing me.  Teabaggers and racists.  Stupid is as stupid does.

Big important stuff that is nothing more than a goddamn pinata on the nightly news.  They are creating a degree of drama that is understandable given the short attention span proscenium beneath which they are forced to enact and pontificate, but this shit is important and their looseness with the football is inexcusable.

What the fuck is going on here?  Ratings and revenue.  Our own damn fault at the end of the day.

It never stops being about our own stupidity.

I can’t believe what I’m seeing.  The tremendous pressure brought to bear on already spineless elected bureaucrats behind virtually the same proscenium.  Again, the asshats in Congress playing inexcusably loose with the ball.

Four lobbyists for every elected member of the legislative branch.  Three quarters of the people wanting what they don’t understand will be a bloody beatdown on industries from insurance to pharmaceutical.  The big boys besides energy and military industrial.  The Democrats pissing themselves.  A signpost ahead.  No Walking In The Park.

I need to wade in and study the minutiae further but we don’t really have a bill yet.  I was hoping to read a bill.  Maybe it’ll be less substantial than an Elmore Leonard novel.  Hoping for a thickish pamphlet.

This is huge and so are Obama’s balls.  He’s pushing a big pile out there after just sitting down.  They make him work for it.  I confess I have yet to see tonight’s press conference.  Didn’t pay the cable bill.

This Clintons saw their clocks cleaned over just such calumny decades ago and the beast has gained muscle and influence ever since.  The gravity of this specific issue is almost immune to underestimation for anyone who pays attention.  If Obama manages to prevail here, his wizardry will be all but unavoidable.  At his command will be the attention and affection of America’s heart along with her best and brightest.

Should he be bested and lose this contest, the path for him to accomplish any other important thing will be much steeper and traction much harder to come by.  I worry because so much is out of his hands.

This is bigger than you know.  Support your President.  He is showing you courage and fortitude.  Just because you voted for him is no reason for you to think your job is done.  Civic duty and patriotism are an American imperative.

“Walk right out into a brand new day
Insane and rising in my own wierd way”
-Art Alexakis from Everclear’s “Santa Monica”

Drinks for my friends.

Birthers.

For those of who haven’t heard this nomenclature of dolts, it refers to a small but vociferous group of nutbags who insist, despite all legitimate evidence to the contrary, that Barack Obama is not an American citizen by virtue of not having been born in the United States.  Gotta give to them.  Sounds big.

Eh.  Gimme a break.  Like McCain Palin or Hillrod wouldn’t have beat this like a baby seal.

I’ve been aware of them for nearly a year and rightly assumed they were a brand of conspiracy theorists who’s inevitability was matched by  inconsequence.  Now, regrettably, it seems the media has afforded them some attention.  Regrettable for a handful of reasons, the most important could be the silly but vulgar stain the movement visits on an already gore festooned Republican party.

Swinging for the fences.

So there’s a bill in the house, authored by a Republican and sponsored by ten other Republicans seeking to mandate Presidential candidates prove citizenship before being inaugurated.  Redundant methinks.  This bill will end up in someone’s ass long before it sees the floor.

It is raw, desperate and willfully ignorant racism.  Stupid, unfounded, crazy eyed hate.

“The conservative talk show host Michael Medved recently referred to the movement’s leaders as “crazy, nutburger, demagogue, money-hungry, exploitative, irresponsible, filthy conservative imposters” who are “the worst enemy of the conservative movement.”  “It makes us look weird. It makes us look crazy. It makes us look demented. It makes us look sick, troubled, and not suitable for civilized company,” he mourned.” -Politico

Interesting that journeyman nutbags have issue with these particular nutbags.

On the other hand, world class dipshit Alan Keyes called it, “the greatest crisis this nation has ever seen” and warned of “chaos, confusion and civil war.” -Politico

Sheezus.

What concerns me here, and what may be the salient reason this whole thing is so unfortunate, is the insidious and desperate rage it lays bare.  I’m compelled to draw some frightening but obvious parallels.  I’m neither predicting nor endorsing what I’m about to say so excuse my caveat.  It’s just that these kinds of shrill and intellectually bereft movements provide fertile ground for the gun loving, God fearing wing nut, who sooner or later opts to take matters into his own hands.  These people are around whether we like it or not.  Often the best we can do is not stir them up.

By the way, if there was no religion and they couldn’t be addicted to God,  maybe these people would come to worship the clarinet.  In a few thousand years, the oboe.  Eventually the saxophone.  Sounds nice doesn’t it?

Guns don’t kill people, people do.

Unless there’s an accident.

Give them a really dumb reason and they morph from plain nuts to domestic terrorist in a week or two of  24 hour news cycles.  Trouble with a capital T and that rhymes with P which stands for personality disorder at the very least.  Already angry and just waiting for a reason.  Probably off the meds because of no supervision or no money.

Tick.  Tick.  Tick.

I’m watching Liz Cheney and The Ragin Cajun, James Carville, go at it on Larry King.  Tonight’s topic comes up and I’ll bet Liz is about to stick her foot in her mouth.  Let’s watch!  She’s all supercilious as she says ‘one of the reasons people are so concerned, is they are uncomfortable with having for the first time ever, a President who’s so reluctant to defend us overseas……….fundamentally uncomfortable with a President who seems to be afraid to defend America.’  -Larry King Live

What the fuck?  Are you kidding me?  Instead of calling it what it is, retarded and paranoid, she chooses to offer rationale.  A rationale of fear for our national security.  Pathetic.  The GOP insists on puking down it’s frilly conservative blouse.  Cut to the sins of the father.

Please let this ridiculously stupid cunt run for office.  Please.  She could honor tradition and be Palin’s running mate.  Oh my stars the grandiose buffoonery.  Palin McCain.  I’m so on board.

Given that I’m a bleeding heart, progressive goddamn liberal, I have real reservations about our role in Afghanistan.  The escalation and troop infusions.  Military might can’t ever be long term infrastructure and anchor for a foreign people’s societal and political constructs in their own land.  We are perfectly capable of kicking their asses but what then?  Iraq again with darker facets of Vietnam.

Afghanistan is a far bigger and more lethal power vacuum than was Iraq.  Iraq was stable.  This, the part of the equation Dumbya’s sock puppets ignored.  This, the part of this equation no one is really talking about now.  In fact, no one seems to be talking about that war very much at all.  You know we’re losing lives over there.  You know we’re mowing them down.

It is a movie far worse than you can imagine.  Just watching the movie would change you forever.

These “birthers” do us all a bad service for polluting the national dialog with their baseless and recklessly incendiary crap.  Swift Boaters still wearing paper masks of patriotism.  Traitors.  I wonder what would happen if we tried them.  Bet we’d figure out they’re breathtakingly despisable.

Drinks for my friends.

 

Johnny Angel Wendell is actually owed credit for the subject matter here, a left leaning radio talk show host, by simply voting yes in a facebook poll as to whether Sarah Palin should run for the Presidency in 2012.

I too am in favor, if only for the burlesque it promises.  After reading “It Came From Wasilla” in the latest Vanity Fair, I’m convinced that the entertainment value of such an endeavor would be no less than awesome by way of spectacle.  And really, if by then that’s the best the GOP can do, it will guarantee a  second term for Obama or whomever else the Democrats see fit to choose.  Just think of the gritty pathos.  The humanity.  The vacuum of humility.

Now, 2012 is a political millennium away.  To be honest, I estimate Palin’s political career, much less her aspirations, to be toast crispy and black.  Stick a fork in her.  Sarah Palin is a dry, overdone pot roast no gravy can mitigate.  So yes, it’s a fantasy.  Forgive me; it would be grande.

The thing is this, the Republicans have nobody.  Not one man or woman.  Not one credible individual with even the remotest potential to entertain the notion of leading the party to any elected office other than say, dog catcher or assemblyman.  Bereft of leaders, message or even philosophy.  Reaping what they have sown.  Karma not just nipping at their heels but ripping chunks from their asses.  Callow adolescent diphshits and geriatric has-beens.  The C Street house of cards collapsing on what would have been potential stewards like Ensign, Pickering and Sanford.  Not so much burlesque as an ill advised, asinine dress rehearsal.

It get’s harder and harder to watch.  More and more disgusting.

As much fun as there is to be had here, this shit is pathetic.  It’s embarrassing.

There are members of congress who believe the earth is but six thousand years old.   Yep, Republicans almost all.  We look to these assholes for leadership?

I feel a rant coming on.  Yep, it’s in the back of my throat.

I’m coughing.  It’s like a goddamn sagebrush.  This is gonna hurt.  Sorry.  Feels like a tumbleweed.  Yep.  Sorry.  Got any grape Kool-Aid?

Ahem.

Go ahead, read your Bible or your Qur’an or whatever gets you through the night.  I’m less sick of your shit interfering with my life than it so violently and presumptively interferes with the lives of everyone else.  Then, it influences my life.  This is no way to run the world.  My God can beat up your God.  Wanna race for pink slips?  Archaic and absurd.  Fonzi vs. Ponch.  Two would be Italians, one played by a Jew the other an Hispanic.

We really need to leave this shit behind.  It’s stupid.

Catholicism is dumb and hypocritical and evil.  A religion based on ancient, obsolete treatise and decorum as much as rampant Church sponsored pedophilia.  Fuck these cocksuckers.  Pun violently intended.  Bullshit from the ground up.  The bureaucracy of this institution has no excuse and even less shame.  They steadfastly protect those who have or would have diddled your children.  Those who have or who would have ass raped your little boy or girl.

Yet they posture in front of you and deign to share God’s will and the way to a moral life with you.  Snake oil.  Charlatans.  Idiots.  Pretenders.  Phonies.  They don’t know or understand shit.

Them having never shared their pudenda with a mature female makes them sacred?  Holy?

Bullshit.  They stick it wherever they can.

I use the Catholics as an example because I loathe them.  But really, all organized religion is the same through the jaundiced lense of hypocrisy and evil.  So many of you need to go play in the street.  You’re not relevant and don’t deserve to be tax free.  You hurt and damage far more than you help and your “faith” is literally based on an imaginary man in the sky.

And they believe the earth is six thousand years old.  I’m done with you people.

Shut up.  Go away.  Jesus is not the way, if he existed at all he may have been a nice guy.  That’s it.

I hate religion.

Drinks for my friends.

Meet Randy Staub.

I called him Rusty Stub.

Randy Staub, while still a crazy as fuck Canadian, was the polar opposite in demeanor to Bill.  Val Kilmer’s Iceman to Bill’s larger than life cartoon monster.  I learned so much by watching him rather than being taken by the hand, he was talented and I owe him.  Stoic and soft spoken.  Disciplined like a scientist, a Canadian hallmark, he effortlessly made things sound giant.  Rode his bike back and forth from Sunset & La Brea to Van Nuys on a few hours sleep.  Ten miles at least with serious hills in between.  Every night.

The guy was good, I courted him like I was gay.

Every now and then he’d wait for me to acquit myself of all things janitorial because he was too tired to ride home.  I became his hag, but he wasn’t a fag.

He had focus.  You’d think he was arrogant.  Nope.  Focused.  Generous and ridiculously smart.  Kinda dark, definitely more than meets the eye.  A quiet charisma with rockstar good looks.  Still he had a degree of innocence and sincere humility. He’s a celestial body in his own right these days.  Google him.  Randy Staub.  He became a wizard.  I like to believe I witnessed the final stages of that transformation.

Didn’t take long at all for him to be picked up by producer Bob Rock as his engineer  (Metallica, Aerosmith, Bon Jovi, Cher, The Cult, David Lee Roth, Skid Row, The Offspring, 311, The Tragically Hip……).  I did everything but wear a dress and paint my face for this guy.  I took his tapes up to the library every night.  I stole his ridiculous bike shoes, filled them with cocoa mix and duct taped them to the ceiling of the mix room.

I wanted his attention.

Late one night after U2 wrapped, he asked with an eggplant stained wine grin if I knew where my car was.  He’d stolen it.  My shit box ’69 Superbeetle.  Told me my keys were at the front desk, but wouldn’t tell me where it was.  Pay back for the shoes on the ceiling thing.  Took me and Randy Wine hours to find it.

“Slow but steady ay?”  Him letting me know he wasn’t impressed yet.

There’s more.

He mentioned to me late one night in his quiet way that he hadn’t tracked a band in a while.  Too long he said.  He’d been in The Mix Room for months.  He was asking me to find a band, an open room and to assist him.  Keys to the universe.

I don’t remember if Cameron De Palma, nephew to Brian De Palma, was still working as a runner at A&M at that point, but we had become good friends.  His was one of the best bands I never got to record.  Studio D was open the following Sunday, Randy’s only day off.  I set it up with The Harvinator.

Staub needed rest so we didn’t start until early evening.  They were not anything like a heavy or hard band, but that’s what Randy managed to extract from them.  Although it took hours it seemed to happen in minutes.  The biggest and most aggressive Cameron’s band had ever sounded and probably ever would.  Before I knew it the main monitors were cracked wide open and the band was sounding like I’d never heard them.  The song we tracked was political, “Surgical Strikes”.  It was the very first time I’d witnessed an engineer make it bloom huge so easily.

The experience still looms large in my mind.  I have a peculiar recall for the way things sound.  It was unlike anything I’d ever heard at that point.  I was floored and excited.  My head swam and my heart raced.  My ears were on fire.  Fucking awesome.  I was inspired.  One of just a handful of times that proved I’d ended up in the right place.

He had made this band who’s music I adored, explode with what I saw as the simple ease of an expert and adept craftsman.  Arguably not what they were supposed to sound like but that didn’t matter.  He wielded his power to bend them into what he wanted to hear.  He smiled at me just once, when he saw on my face that I understood what he’d done.

A wizard.

Late in the morning, after the band had left, all the cables wound and I had taken all the mics and auxiliary outboard gear back to the shop, I found Randy neatly arranging all the mic stands along the wall by their triangular bases;  a simple puzzle.  All arms facing the same direction like a company of soldiers.  There was to be a string date the next day.  A thirty or forty piece orchestra.  The powers that were would never even see the condition we left the room in and that was really beside the point in his mind.

Good engineers cannot afford dominance from the right hemisphere.  They rely heavily on the left side.  I’m good with my left brain but it’s no face card in a poker game.  Most interesting occupations require good dancing between the two.  Rusty Stub had it nailed.  That means he wasn’t normal.  None of us were or are.  At one point or another, you breathe that shit or you don’t.

You may be in it longer than you’re feeling it, but you don’t last unless you breathe it.

Anyway, then Staub gets married and there’s this huge rock & roll wedding down in Newport Beach at the Four Seasons I think.  He sent a Limo for Bill Kennedy and Scott Humphries and I was invited along by both Bill and Randy.  It had a push button liquor dispenser.  I shit you not.  Like ‘B’ for burbon and ‘V’ for vodka…….all the way to Newport Beach.

There were girls with us, I think one was named Jeanne and she was the hot one.  None of us banged either of them.  The Wedding and reception were classy and chaotic.  There was a dinner of some sort where I seem to remember Bill causing some controversey with his blue dick.  Humphries sneered at my jeans but I had a shirt and jacket.  Half the dudes at the ceremony were in jeans including all the guys from Little Ceasar.  Did I tell you Humphries was a dick?

I remember the party we had in the beautiful suite provided by the Randy and Janice consortium.  An ocean view and the honeymoon suite kept sending tubs of beer and hard liquor.  Literally every fifteen or twenty minutes room service was at the door with a galvanized tub full of Coronas or bottles of Jack or Tanqueray.  Not buckets.  Tubs.

There was this girl named Carol but I’d been drinking for twelve hours and I just couldn’t make that work.  She was hotness.  Red hair, excellent rack, a clever mind……….. the Maid of Honor I believe.  I don’t blame her for never taking me seriously after that.  Great smile.  Cool woman.

Woke up the next morning with Bill Kennedy yelling and spanking my forehead.  I opened my eyes.  Ocean View.  Bright Ocean View.  “Beer!”, he was yelling.  With one hand he was smacking my face and with the other he was holding a bottle of Miller too close for me to focus on.  At least it blocked out the sun.

I was into photography at the time and I took the most brilliant black and white portrait of bill that morning.  In his robe and sunglasses, smoking a camel and drinking a beer.  I gotta find it.  Roland the Headless Thompson helped me develop the film and make some 8×10’s

We went whale watching.  There were drinks on the boat.  The seas were rough that day.  There was a group of us but I don’t remember who.  That group got to watch me end up on the shoes of tourists a few times.  I’m not a puker so I don’t think I puked.

Next thing I remember we’re on our way back to Hollywood in the Limo with the push button liquor dispenser.  I think the girls were with us.  We smoked a lot of pot.

It took me three days to feel normal.

The whole experience was very valuable to me.  I learned some very important life lessons.

The first one is, make sure you don’t get so hammered you can’t seal the deal.  Sheezus.  Rookie move.  The the second is, try not to get so hammered you black out sporadically and eventually realize that huge chunks of a very good time are missing.  Been pretty good at those things since.

Also, don’t go to places you’re likely to fall down if you’ve been drinking.

I remember running into Randy outside of Tower Records on Ventura one night.  It was summer and his eyes were clear but the look on his face I wasn’t used to.  He’d just finished some ridiculous ordeal that was a Bob Rock production.  Twelve to eighteen hour days for months on end.  It may have been Metallica’s Black album.  Probably because it was done at A&M.

He’d been sleeping for the last few days.  He told me I was the first person he’d seen that he knew outside of the record he’d been on for months.  He told me he was over sleeping and needed to get out and about.  He was raw.  Almost confused.  I honestly think he suddenly saw himself in my eyes and grinned a little at it.

“Slow but steady ay?”  He said.

Drinks for my friends.

“The nation whose population depends on the explosively compressed headline service of television news can expect to be exploited by the demagogues and dictators who prey upon the semi-informed.” -1996 memoir, “A Reporter’s Life.”

It’s a trite understatement to say he lived a full and long life.  My first memories of Walter Cronkite are from a handsome cherry wood Zenith console television, the smell of hot vacuum tubes and visions of astronaut endeavors in black and white.  The Columbia Broadcast System was the only channel with reliable reception on the outskirts of a very small town.

Rabbit ears but no foil.  We were a class act.  Roger Mudd.  Eric Sevareid.  Walter Cronkite.

CBS, NBC and ABC.

CBS.

The great improviser, who declared the Vietnam war unwinnable, after seeing it himself.  Pretty much ending the presidency of LBJ.  Legitimately speechless when Neil Armstrong declared one small step for man.  Yep, he paused when announcing the death of JFK.  Maybe teared up a little.  Unafraid to cover America’s civil rights struggle.  Back then there was the newspaper and the evening news.  The evening news was Walter Cronkite.  An icon who managed to eclipse Edward R. Murrow as America’s pre-eminent journalist.

Comforting that he wasn’t felled early like Murrow, Jennings or Russert.

But oh, what he must have thought of contemporary journalism.  The bar he hoisted so high, disgraced, disregarded and ultimately ignored.   Charlatans like Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh et al. Infotainment and Fox News.   Rampant unfounded celebrity worship.

He came from an era when network bosses weren’t sure if America would tolerate a half an hour of hard news as opposed to fifteen minutes.  They did.  They craved it.   To then witness our attention span shrink and atrophy.  Popular culture force fed to America and the rest of the world, a phenomena that eventually rendered actual news not entertaining enough, no matter it’s truth or content.  Mr. Cronkite was already on the sidelines.  Retired.  How this felt to him must have been devastating.

One could argue that America has gone to shit since Cronkite retired.  Sure seems like the time we really began to lose our way.  I’m thinking Reagan era.  Could have used him then.

His own truthful ideal obsolete.  Forced to witness it decline from there.

Graceful and honest.  A surrogate for the people’s necessary information.  He chose to color outside the lines but once or twice.  When he did, he did so with the best intentions and the result sent magnificent waves through all of America.  He affected change by telling HIS truth.  Otherwise, he did a little bit less.  He told us THE truth.

We ended up with Nixon.

He told us what we needed to know as best he could.

Yes, I’m old enough to remember him quite fondly.  The smells of my father’s aftershave and dinner in the kitchen, waiting for Mr. Cronkite to finish with the day’s events.

Good luck old man.

My hope is that you went gentle into that goodnight.

Drinks for my friends.

“Joe The Plumber…you can quote me…..is a dumbass.  He should stick to plumbing.” -Meghan McCain

Nevermind his name’s not Joe and he’s not a plumber.

That’s rich.

Sarah palin has the highest favorability rating of anyone in the GOP and she remains the parties most effective fund raiser.

That’s just sick.  Disturbing.  Portentous.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Sessions, Cornyn and Grassley step on their dicks in the Sotomayor hearings.  They focus on her speeches as opposed to, and in obvious ignorance of, her seventeen years as a sharp and capable centrist jurist.  Dogs and ponies.  They can’t come up with a damn thing.  Didn’y lay a glove on her.  Pat Buchanan and Rachel Maddow collided over her on MSNBC earlier today.  Rachel rocked by telling Uncle Pat he was “dating himself”.   Summed up the disconnect between asstards like Buchanan and well, the rest of us.

That guy doesn’t lose many fights.  She kicked his ass.

I’ve written about this a lot but I’m not tired of it yet.  The Republican party is one hot mess.  Tying their own shoes and that’s a bad thing.  An implosion that keeps on giving.  Three sex scandals in as many weeks, all three by prominent moralizing Republicans, who happen to live on or in (?), C Street and happen to call themselves a Christian Mafia.  I believe all three have waxed hypocritical about other politicians who’ve been caught engaged in acts of untoward.  They hollered self righteously for resignations, and now refuse to resign.

Fucking poseurs.

All this in a venue the IRS has been led to believe is a church.  A goddamn church.  Some media began calling it a frat house today.  That works.  The fraternity is the Christian Mafia.  Fuck me.

Spying and torture and assassinations, oh my.  Now I hear they used insects, fire ants even during interrogations.  Another wingtip slams the marble everyday.  Turns out, Republicans really are idiots.  Fucking arrogant, willfully ignorant, lazy morons.  They do nothing but posture and make insipid pronouncements awkwardly disguised as rational disagreement.

The hangover is getting to be a bit much.  I knew it would be a long one but it’s becoming insufferable.

You can’t write this shit.

When I hear about this kinda buffoonery, I can’t help but wonder just how much of this ‘berg is above water?

It’s like Republicans only drink a certain kind of water and the Democrats just figured out how to infiltrate the supply.  It has become the perfect storm.

Or maybe, within the most cosmic of ironies, evolution is biting them in the ass.  A burst of honest, progressive and still empirical thought manifests as their own species threatening comet.  Or maybe ice age.

Whatever it is, a hard winter is upon the Grand Old Party.

Drinks for my friends.

Seemed like a kinda profound topic when it first occurred to me.

I want it to be good.  Pleasant.  Everyone gets their fair share and we are allowed to make our own happiness without concern for shelter and food or medicine.  We should have to work for these things for sure.  But, it’s ridiculous given the largess mother earth produces every day that so many go without.  Criminal that those lacking do so only by the hands of them that have so much.  There is a point where sanity ceases to be sane.  A point where it all is so ridiculous.

We are there.

Work with me here.  The last decade has seen the the single most massive redistribution of wealth in the history of history.  The rich got filthy richer and the poor got less and less than shit.  Veterans, handicapped and disabled.  Mentally ill and inner city humans, minorities and laborers.  All of them bound ever harder.  And middle class mouth breathers shriek about socialism and health care like they haven’t been ripped the fuck off by their own for decades.  Absurd.  Stupid.  The richest country ever on the face of this blue marble, afraid to distribute her gargantuan excess equitably enough to provide for the common welfare at hand.  To secure liberty and perhaps even the pursuit of happiness.

They wail and whine about any change at all to a corrupt system that incentivizes greed over service, while their very own pockets are beseeched and invaded by the paper champions they so covet and support.  Them that fall from grace in hypocritical scandal after embarrassing calumny.  Just how stupid are the great unwashed?

Yep, just that frustratingly stupid.  Just like that.  Over and over.  Again and again.  Fucking stupid.

Fools.  “Why behave in public if you’re living on a playground?” -DLR

An 8,000 square foot house for two people?  Maybe.  I don’t know.  Why would someone who makes twenty million a year aspire to make two hundred million?  Who cares at that point?  Unless you intend to give it away.  I can see buying a nice car.  I like cars.  I have a penis.

A guy named Horace Walpole said a hundred years ago that life is is a tragedy to those who feel and a comedy to those who think.

I don’t want my government using my money to buy so many fucking bombs and guns and ever more efficacious ways to kill.  WWII was the really the last time we needed all that paraphernalia of death and destruction.  What we need now is clean air and water.  A safe and reliable food supply, a clean well lit place to live, health care and a decent education.  These are not outrageous things to ask from the richest country in the world.

I’m not suggesting that everything be free, rather simply that productive employed citizens be able to afford life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  The poor and disadvantaged should at least see a light at the end of a tunnel.  We can’t take care of everyone but we can do a helluva lot better than we are now.

I don’t understand why the great unwashed or so afraid of it.  Health care.  I believe it to be a right.  It shames and sickens me that we are not afforded this merely because all of our money, yes, our money, has been spent on our ability to wreak havoc on the undeserving around the world for the last six decades.  To establish dominance.  To show who’s boss.  So there’s no mistake about who’s boss.  Disgusting.

I love this country and I love it’s people.  Well, some of them anyway.  We all deserve it, whether you’re one of the shit bags who buy into the specious, self serving bullshit fear the Republicans cram down your neck everyday or not.  We’ve all actually earned it.  We deserve it.

Are you aware that there at least four pharmaceutical/medical insurance lobbyists for every member of congress?  The legislative branch of our government is bought and paid for.  Duh.  The thing is this, we the people have the same advantage we’ve always had.   Same potential.  Same power.  They all still need to get elected.  It’s true we’ve seen rampant polling malfeasance, but I’d like to believe that if Iranian brand fuckery happened here we’d be pretty pissed and the revolution would be televised.

I’m not so cynical as to as to imagine the reverse.  Just cynical enough to understand why they do it so slow, so incremental, so deliberate.  The powers that be fear this muscle unflexed.  They know better than most that should the muscle contract, they are fucked.  So they shoot anesthesia directly into it wherever, whenever and however they can.  Enough of you turn the other way for them to get away with it.

It’s pretty fucked up.

Ultimately, the power lives and dies with the people.  I’m not sure how to put a fine enough point on that.  You want health care?  “Only you can prevent forest fires.”  – Smokey Bear

See what I’m saying?  We are in a better position now to get what we want than we have been in a long time.  What we have coming.

Look at it like this, nuclear weapons are weapons of mass destruction and they are obsolete.  It’s razors edge, but right now the game is plus or minus zero.  Even Steven.  Penis withering logic.  So long as no other country or state manages to acquire them.  That would be a game changer.

Anyway.  Massive armies are made obsolete by two things.  The clash of hundreds of thousands of soldiers is an archaic concept.  It will never happen again.  And the advent of nuclear arsenals ensure that as strategy, a hundred thousand on a battlefield is a relic of an idea.  Kind of  two in one bonus logic.

I work hard to bring this to you.

The only realistic way to cure what infects us is a carpet bombing of our defense budget.  The biggest budget for any single concept in the history of man.  Eisenhower warned us of the perils of a military industrial complex and it all came true regardless.  The peak of the pyramid of our plutocracy is breaking this country’s back more than anything else that is actually on the goddamn TV.

I’m cutting to the chase here.  The 800 lb. pound gorilla is us and our ridiculous fantasies of superiority and exclusivity.  America needs to understand that we are no better than anyone else and by that I mean country, state or ethnicity.  If we want a kinder gentler world we need to back off.  This insane figure of over a trillion a year spent for the killing of other people is just not getting us anywhere.  We’re good at it but does nothing but backfire.

I’m no xenophobe but we really need to look inward.  Devote more time to introspection and infrastructure.  Acting as the world’s over armed mall cop has done nothing but cost millions of lives and elevate us to the level of world bully.  The bully they can’t wait to see trip so they can kick and use their sticks and clubs.  Our foreign policy sucked and so did domestic.

Israel, for example, is a billboard for diminishing returns.  A postcard for liability.  Our sugar daddy relationship with Israel is embarrassing.  I don’t doubt they have enough nukes to turn the middle east into glass.  Time for them to pull their shit without the biggest guy on the block backing them up.

For example.

We are stumbling and it’s ugly.

We are the only wealthy country without health care.  We are the wealthiest.  We pay twice as much as most and  what we get kinda sucks.  It’s a joke.

It’s not that simple but it’s a good place to start.

Drinks for my friends.

For what it’s worth, I began this blog on Friday the 10th.  My Spidey sense was bristling and I knew strange things were afoot at the Circle K.  I was right.  On with it.

Karl Rove and Harriet Miers to testify before the House Judiciary Committee on the subject of politicization of the Justice Department and subsequent firing of attorneys for purely political reasons.  On the record.  Transcripts to be released to the public.  Thus far the committee hasn’t relinquished the option of public testimony from either.

Booya.

Then this:

“………… in late June, Panetta admitted in secret testimony to Congress that the agency had concealed information and misled lawmakers repeatedly since 2001.”

“Far more important is Panetta’s reported admission that his agency has “concealed significant actions” and “misled members of Congress.” – The Nation.com

Redundant but had to throw it in.

I’m thinking Pelosi is off the hook for recent accusations that the CIA misled congress.

Then we learn of the subterfuge at the the behest of Darth Cheney his own self.  This from the New York Times no less.  He overtly ordered a CIA program, that may very well have been a vehicle for assassinations, be kept secret from the United States legislative branch.  This in direct conflict with the National Security Act.  It begs the oft asked question, who the fuck does this guy think he is?

Wow.

Next up:

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Attorney General Eric Holder is leaning toward appointing a prosecutor to investigate the Bush administration’s interrogation practices, a source familiar with the process confirmed to CNN. This precipitated by Holder clearing his schedule for two full days to read and reread the Inspector General’s ’04 report on torture.  A document as yet still classified despite official pronouncement(s) to the contrary.  A report that allegedly spooked the shit out of the former Bush administration.  A report described by those who have had access as “sickening”.  A report that states quite clearly that the interrogation “techniques” were not at all efficacious in any way.

Holder, according to Newsweek said, “There were startling indications that some interrogators had gone far beyond what had been authorized in the legal opinions issued by the Bush justice department, which were themselves controversial.  He (Holder) told one intimate that what he saw “turned my stomach.”

A torture prosecutor.

Oh boy.  Blood in the water?  Chum.  Methinks perhaps so.

I like Patrick Fitzgerald, he’s thorough and has giant kevlar balls.  Not your average pit bull.  This guy gets punched in the junk and doesn’t break stride.  He already knows everything.  Every fucking thing.  He knows Cheney to be so full of shit he looks to Fitz like he’s got a grill festooned with Oreos and potted meat and a full diaper.  He does.  He stinks like it.

An obscene volume of excrement has been launched with awesome velocity, a giant fan inside its trajectory.  The result will resemble a primate’s rendering of fireworks that frightened it to trembling.  Gonna be a mess.  Washington will be festooned with gore.  Inside and out.  he chimp will throw it’s mud at fools.

War crimes committed without a doubt.  Crimes for a war not justified.  Hundreds of thousands if not millions dead.  Tens of thousands of our own dead or maimed, permanently handicapped and not receiving adequate care.  Lies and irony piled high.

Ain’t that America.

The soft shoe approach so far adopted by the Obama administration regarding all matters prosecutorial notwithstanding, critical mass will soon be at hand.  A fecal combustion as inevitable as gravity.  Castles of cards flattened.

Arrogance, hubris, misanthropy, avarice and megalomania. All that and a dipshit chief executive of a once proud nation.  Making egregious voter fraud appear Fisher Price.  Right up there with lying to the American public about the urgent need for “pre-emptive” war.  The single worst Presidential administration to ever occupy the White house.

What have we done?  We are not without blame.  In too many ways, too many of us were complicit.  Those who weren’t part of a solution were part of the problem.  Forgive the cliche’.  They still are.  Wailing nonsensically about socialism when few of them can even define the concept.  Nevermind that any and every country to adapt national health care has never looked back because it works.  It works you fools and the people are happy to have it and research and the practice of medicine thrives.

Our own elected representatives moaning about bias and racism on the first day of confirmation hearings for judge Sotomayor.  An approach that is all at once archaic, obsolete and embarrassingly absurd.

See, the difference and indeed the solution has always pivoted or not, on the citizenry.  Our engagement or absence thereof; the most important example just visited on us by Dick-in-Bush and the great unwashed.  Complacency, willful ignorance and fear fomented and eagerly imbibed.  Thank you sir, may I have another.

There is hope here, but it remains merely a concept if we don’t pay attention and get involved.

“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.”  -Bertrand Russell

“I never promised you a rose garden.” -written by Joe South, sung by Lynn Anderson

Drinks for my friends.

Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear.

Blow me.

A quick assessment of the faux furor over the Sotomayor nomination by overtly racist Republicans, notwithstanding that her confirmation is a foregone conclusion, and the swim club debacle in Pennsylvania, where existing patrons were frightened by negros and the public statement of fear that new members would “change the complexion” of the organization, stand as proof that America continues to harbor backward ass racist fucks as a significant and powerful demographic.

What we need here is a national moment of vomiting.  Why can’t we grow the fuck up?

In other news, I’ve discovered a personal predilection for naughty secretary or teacher student themed scenarios when I surf for porn.  Can’t help it, it blows my skirt up.

New evidence today that John Ensign is an even bigger douchebag than Mark Sanford.  No small feat there.  And this religious organization they both belong to called C Street?  A tax exempt church?  Are you fucking kidding me?  Makes me think I haven’t been nearly devious enough in my own life.  I mean, the obtuse crap I could get away with.  I’m gonna take one of those online courses and get my shit ordained and licensed.

Hey baby won’t you lay down with me.  Hey baby.

Something else I want to tell you.  Enough of the Michael Jackson media masturbation.  I’m over it.  A tragedy for sure, but enough is enough.  I’m more than tired of having this speculative freakshow painted on my brain pan every time I access any mainstream media.  I’m looking for shit to mock or make fun of and there’s really nothing funny about any of this.  Tired, tired, tired.

I like chunky peanut butter.  I’m a bit of a texture eater.  Last night my woman took me to sushi.  I adore sushi.  I use an alarming amount of wasabi in my low sodium soy sauce.  I kinda like that sinus brain burn.  Anyway, after the standard salmon and albacore with shaved red onion and ponzu sauce, we ordered a dish with raw tuna and tomatos slathered in the house dressing over fried wonton skins.  Texture and flavor explosions on my tongue.  Sinful.  Decadent.  Evidence of the divine.

Made me pine for the flowerful flavor and structural softness of avocado.  Next time I’ll know.

I read something today that said less than six percent of scientists identify themselves as Republican.  Go figure.  Logic and an empirical ethic vs. fairy tales lies so large they block out the sun.  I’m a socialist I guess because I just can’t own humankind is only six thousand years old.  Flat earthers.  I really want for people to believe whatever they want.  Freedom of speech.  Freedom of religion.  Freedom of thought.

Unless it’s really fucking stupid.

Does this look infected to you?

Oh well.

Were you to ask me if I like people in general, I’d say no.  Perhaps emphatically.  If given time to think about it, I’d probably answer the opposite.  As I sit here, I’m thinking about lots of people I like.  It is my hope that arrogant dipshits don’t out number the thoughtful and aware.  Who am I to blow against the wind?

Paul Simon always makes me think of Al.  I’m not sure why.  Graceland is a gorgeous record but I knew that before I met Al.  We made records together, Al and I.  So I called him just now.  He sounded good.  He’s just the smartest coolest uncool guy I’ve ever met.  If ever there was was a quiet genius, his name would be Al.  If I were him, I’d pay me to spend time with his kids so they turn out cooler than him.  They deserve a shot at being cool.  His family needs a Kenny Powers type influence like me.

They need an asshole.

The Windshield Wonder combines a micro fiber cleaning cloth with a long handle and pivoting head.  Ten bucks bitch.  Oh, the humanity.

I am so sorry for the sandwich I’ve caused you.

Drinks for my friends.

My experience with the Canadians is a book in itself.  I’m thinking these bastards deserve at least a couple three chapters.

Meet Bill Kennedy.

I’ll never forget my first time.  Neither would you.  Kurt Gibson hits the heroic home run in game one of the World Series against Oakland in ’88.  Randy Staub calls, we’d just seen the same thing, he was pumped and his buddy Bill was with him.  We all thought drinks.  I wash my hands and brush my teeth.  Change my shirt.  The doorbell rings and there’s this ugly little fucker with brilliant blue eyes and long red hair standing there.  Tight black pants, Beatle boots, a CBGB t-shirt and a black leather jacket.  Teeth like a donkey.

My first thought was The Tasmanian Devil.

I stick out my hand and he grabs my balls and says, “Nice ta meet ya motherfucker.”  Then he laughs all throaty and mocking but like a fucking witch.  Kinda spooked me.

Staub hangs back with a half grin looking me right in the eyes.

Can’t remember what the deal was but neither one of them could drive legally in the States.  We headed into Hollywood in my shitbox ’69 Superbeetle.  They rode in the back like I was the chauffer and took turns covering my eyes and sticking fingers in my mouth.  They bought my drinks, Staub got shut down by some betty in fishnets while me and the Tasmanian Devil got shit hammered.  We drove back under the same conditions.  Except for alcohol and drugs part, it was a virtual re-enactment.

I don’t even remember where we went.

For what it’s worth, I don’t do that anymore.

Bill Kennedy or Kill Bennedy, his alter ego after too much Jagermeister, was and probably still is, a crazy bastard with a big heart.  He was to help and teach me a lot.  Sometimes his own worst enemy, he’d monitor and mix so loud his clients would be driven from the room.  His maxim was to “make a racket” and he always did.  Hard drinker.  We all were.  Truth is, he drank harder than most of us and that’s saying something.  Not as hard as the rest of us and that’s saying something too.

I was furious with him for using forty seven microphones on a drum kit when I was producing/engineering my very first record for Down By Law.  Even in a studio like A&M, that amount of excess taxed resources.  A day to sort out phase alone.  Ridiculous.  Over compensation for a tiny penis.  He was doing Demos for Motley Crue in D and I was trying to make a record in C.  Prick.

Once upon a time, he had like eight Marshall stacks and six Ampeg cabinets going full tilt in D, so loud it was leaking into the live echo chambers above C, I had one patched into a mix I was doing in B.  Had to go to an EMT plate.  Bill Kennedy was an abhorrent gear and amplitude slut.  Louder was better.  He sometimes missed the point.  Subtlety was never his Devil’s advocate.  It never occurred to him.

Bill Kennedy was a dick.  I don’t know what he is these days but if he’s any less of a dick I might like him more than I remember.

We became good friends and I miss him.  Standard greeting was, “Hey fucker”.  He taught me a shitload, particularly in matters of outside the box thinking and extreme approaches to standard engineering gospel.  I learned to push all the ratio buttons in on an Urei 1176 with the input and output all the way up at once.  Gorgeously unpredictable distortion.  Child’s play. Bill would patch six of them together, turn the line amps to eleven, push the fader to the top, mute the console, turn the master gain all the way up and deselect the mute button for the adolescent pleasure of making the NS10’s smoke and spark.

Call a tech, the monitors are toast.

I learned compression and distortion, concepts rarely mutually exclusive, from Bill.

The strip joint across the the street, Crazy Girls, was known as Bill’s office.  Canadian for strippers is “peelers”.

A story about Canadians including Bill:

Randy Staub had found himself a lovely bride named Janice from the other lot so we had a bachelor party.  Events are soupy blurry but I remember spraying Bill in the face with air freshener I’d discovered in the glove compartment of a taxi and helping to toss his ass from said taxi while it was still moving.  He rolled end over end.  Ass over teakettle.

Kadump kadump.

Not sure if it was before or after we got thrown out of a mud wrestling place on Western called The Tropicana.

What happened next is unclear. We were drinking and spilling and yelling.   Staub was good to go.  He was in some sort of a diaper.  Down there on the stage.  We’d all put up hundreds of dollars.  Not me, but all the other Canucks.  Next thing, we’re on the sidewalk under the neon and there’s a handful of bouncers with their arms folded, saliva ran from their snarling lips.

Proud shithoused Canadians.

I think it was before.  The cab thing.

I had wisdom enough to discourage an actual fistfight.  Been there, done that.  No win situation.  Bad idea.

That was my genius.

What I remember next is Bill falling from his second story balcony trying to break into his own apartment after losing his keys. I think I heard his his ribs crack.  We  got in and Bill was the first to lose consciousness, maybe because his ribs were cracked.  Pain and alcohol being a formidable force multiplier.  Yes Mother, there were drugs too.

It was Staub’s idea was to paint his dick blue with one of those jumbo Sharpies.  So that’s what we did.  Painted Bill’s flaccid, unconscious penis a deep inky blue.  Bill was so pleased, he whipped it out at even the slightest provocation for any member of the wedding party and probably a few tourists.  I remember some old folks being offended.  I don’t remember what his dick looks like.  Maybe I blocked it out.  There’s a chance it never happened.

He complained to me once that it wasn’t coming off.  Soap wasn’t doing the job.  I reminded him that Sharpies were alcohol based and the answer was contained therein.  He said to me, “Fuck, I’ll just leave it.”

A Kill Bennedy catchphrase:  “Take a long, slow suck on my runny scrotum you stinking cunt.”  There was something else about eggs in a swamp and elaborate theories regarding stale semen buildup or “SSBU”.

I just knew the crazy little fucker would never supply me with cause to question his integrity.  Were I to drop the ball, it would be on me.  Bill Kennedy would never throw me under the bus with alibi or malice in mind, however.  Kind of a miserable prick but he treated me well.  Fiercely loyal.  Big heart.

Much love to you Bill.

Drinks for my friends.

Robert McNamara shuffled off his mortal coil yesterday.  Ninety three.  Architect of America’s abject folly in Vietnam.  In his time, he was humankind’s most  notorious failure.  He confessed to understanding as early as 1965 that the war was unwinnable.  Without Mac, there’s a chance the world would never have suffered his contemporary, Donald Rumsfeld.

Almost 60,000 dead Americans and some two million dead Vietnamese.  For nothing.  Well north of 4,000 dead Americans and as many as one million dead Iraqis.  For nothing.  A zero sum game with the exception of the enrichment of our military industrial complex.  A serious hole when you look at things as diverse as money and reputation lost.

The 2003 documentary “The Fog of War”, although fascinating, falls limp as a mea culpa.  It serves as more of a rationale for a despondent and tortured man than anything resembling an explanation or apology.  I believe he suffered.  Most people would say it’s lucky to live for ninety three years.  I’ll bet Mac didn’t think so.  He was haunted.  Every day.  He deserved it.

As near as I can see, we’ve learned nothing.  America is still a swamp for this brand of reptile.  Soulless  technocrats in charge of carnage.  Captains Crunch.  Obsolete but we still breed them.  By the hundreds of thousands.  Mac was a far bit smarter than Rummy so he had a way higher body count.  Maybe they’re getting stupider.  Maybe.  But if that’s true, then so are we, because we just got fooled again.

I don’t believe in Heaven any more than I do in Hell.  But if there exists a destination for a soul this guilty, it is my hope he ends up there and that Donny boy Rumsfeld ends his days suffering and tortured just like Mac.

Fuck these guys.  They sucked.

Drinks for my friends.

There simply is no cogent remonstrance to be made for Sarah Palin’s resignation being in anyone’s best interest but her own.  Callow, cowardly and nothing if not character as yet still inchoate.  A better, smarter  politician would have stepped back, done personal inventory and realized her own tempest was precisely that.  Her own.

Instead, she threw in the towel and walked away, blaming everyone but herself.  She did not belong there and that’s not entirely her fault but none of it is mine.

Maybe there was an epiphany.  Maybe she finally realized she was in way over her head.

That would be nice.

Ideally, she could own some some humility, regroup and educate herself on the issues;  a little geography and some foreign policy.  If the content of her character was what her and her mouth breathing Christian conservative base would have us believe, after some sincere and earnest wood shedding, she could rise to the occasion.  Re-emerge a more sober, thoughtful and with luck, a far better informed public figure.

Either way, I suspect she has for all intents and purposes, taken the political dirt nap.  Notwithstanding her rabid enthusiasts, typically of the under informed and aforementioned mouth breathing variety, the pooch has pretty much been gang raped.  The resolute, far right, Christian neoconservative base is in decline.  An accelerated rate of atrophy as it goes the way of the Dodo.

Cheney tried.  He failed.  He will be hated forever.  He dines on live infants.

I’m not too broken up.  Political Darwinism eroding a really stupid and toxic doctrine.  As rapidly as the jackasses ascended, so precipitous is their decline.  Self correction as it should be; kinda vengeful.

Should she choose to run in 2012, her comeuppance will be complete.  Even were she to stage the most spectacular transformation ever witnessed by the instantaneous post technocratic media, she will arrive obsolete.  Redundant.  Too little too late.  She will embarrass herself and her party.  Her mascara will run.  She will remain a sullen runner up to prom queen.  No ride in the magic float.

It’s my hope she tries her hand at something else.  I get the feeling this was her first real ass kicking.  She caved.  Better to know it now, huh?

Sheezus.

My advice to you Mrs. Todd Palin is to pursue entertainment.  Not journalism.  Entertainment.  Broadcasting.  Somebody said something about a talk show.  This your best option.  I would get there soon.  You’ve already got a huge book deal.  Get a radio show.  Start slow.  Learn the business.  You’re not stupid, just not very smart.  You are the paradigm of right wing radio.  Right between G. Gordon Liddy and Glenn Beck.  The very exclusive, very elite of the ridiculous douchebags.

Learn to talk to people that are only as smart as you are.  You’ll be so much happier.

So will the rest of us.

Drinks for my friends.

Belated happy Independence weekend wishes to you all.

I do hope it was at least as good as mine.  At least as interesting.  I hope as warm.

“I try to use positive association……anytime anything good happens to me, I stick something up my ass.”  -Margaret Cho

I spent the day at a family barbecue.  Not my family, my girlfriend’s.  Extraordinarily pleasant and I hope to show you how interesting.

I always bring wine because I’m flush with wine and  that’s what I want to drink in the afternoon.  Hard liquor in the afternoon is uncivilized when women and children are present.  Family barbecue.  Zins and pinots for everyone.

Except the pinot had gone bad.  Cork came out way too easy.  No pop.  Tasted like ass.  Poured it out for fear it would get drunk and come back on me.

Very nice people.  Pleasant and warm and sincere.  I was under some degree of scrutiny.  You see, I was with my girlfriend, at a holiday barbecue, with her people.  Not mine.  Her relatives and very close friends and all manner of folks who’ve known her since she was a child as well as people who’ve never not known her.  They were checking me out.  I caught nobody staring.

I learned to slap some bones. I hope I got that right.  Dominos.  I was monitored during this activity as well.  Two charismatic women at the end of our table lent tacit approval while my girlfriend showed me the game.  They kept a close eye and nodded in approval when I made a play.  I’m not sure why.

Food.  Pork ribs,  meat sliding from the bone with juiciness and justice for all.  Homemade mac & cheese of creamy texture and richness.  Baked beans with excellent consistency under tooth with all the peppery and  flavorful.  Sublime deviled eggs made me greedy.  So many other things to taste but it’s conspicuously rude to fill your plate and not finish it.  It was just so nice.  My family does it too.  They set up a spread and pretty much welcome whoever walks through the door like an old friend as long as you’re with someone they know.

I haven’t often understood how swell it feels to be the stranger on a day like today.  Warm.  It’s warm when the woman you’re with affords you the benefit of the doubt in such a large gathering of people you’ve never seen before.

We ate and drank and the roosters sat four at a time at the domino table by the pool and talked the most hysterical shit you can imagine.  Brutal but always funny.  That was the line; say whatever you like but it better not be mean and it better be funny.  Nothing personal.  Inside those rules and the rules of the game, they played and played.  Loudly.  Roosters.  Peacocks.  Awesome.

I was one of two white people there.  There was me and one other honky in attendance.  I’m not here to make a big deal about that but it is germane to the story.  I’m sorry, I adore the word honky.  The word honky is goddamn funny.  Even funnier in italics.  Honky.

Picture George Jefferson or Fred Sanford.  Honky

So here are all my cards.

Cracker.

I moved from Carson City Nevada to Atlanta Georgia when I was nineteen years old.  I want to say this as simply as possible.  I grew up with white people.  The handful of people with different skin pigmentation were few and far between.  My parents were non judgmental,  open minded, freedom loving Democrats.  Not Hippies but progressive hicks.  I really never had a chance to develop a bias and I was never really exposed to much.

Honkies.

Atlanta Georgia hit me right in the mouth with it’s polite but overt racial divide.  First person I talked to fresh off the boat used the word nigger in his first sentence to me.  Southern comfort.  It was Atlanta when black women began to ask me what I was mixed with.  It was mostly women.  The better I knew them the harder they laughed.  I really didn’t think too much about it.  They were teasing me or flirting.  Still,  ‘Honey, what’re you mixed with?’  is something I’ve heard hundreds, if not thousands of times.

Through my years as a recording engineer I did everything from hip hop to gospel.  Punk to metal.  I remember being asked that question one way or another, over and over.

My Girlfriend and I ended up at Magic Johnson’s TGI Fridays in the not too recent past.  We drove away and it occurred to me  I was the only white guy in there.  Almost as soon as I brought it up she told me nobody else noticed because most probably assumed I was black.

I’m no idiot.  I understand that it’s almost mathematically impossible for me to be exclusively Caucasian.  I’m Scottish and German.  I  also understand I’m a descendent of Custer.  I’m pretty white.  Not pretty, but white.  Blue eyes, fair skin, blond hair…..curly to nappy and I’m all torso.  Broad shoulders, barrel chest and an oversized head.  Short but powerful hindquarters.  I’d make an excellent backwards digging rodent.

Today I met a white black man.  It was his house I was at.  Very nice man.  We shook hands.  He was white.  His sister saw me from afar and mistook me for him.  She and I had never met until today.   A rooster at the domino table.  His other sister observed me for a time and summoned my girlfriend from across the swimming pool.  She had a question.  The family half African American and Half German.  Grew up in Compton.

“What is he mixed with?”

It wasn’t just her question, other people wanted to know.  The thing is this.  My epiphany was thus.  All this time, the question was not whether I was black or not, it was assumed I was black.   The question was what else was I mixed with.

Not how black, but how white.

I contemplated all this this while driving in silence with her along the freeway.  Sitting in her driveway and the gorgeous cacophony of fireworks bouncing and echoing through a hilly neighborhood of beautiful houses.  Turned on the radio.  Frampton came alive and Journey sealed the deal.  Technicolor bursts  as we sped through dusk on the 60 and the 405.

I’m an agnostic.  Whatever.  If there is a sensible idea, it’s that we’re all supposed to be equal.  We’re all supposed to procreate to the point where we have no reason to discriminate based on pigmentation, sexual preference, orientation or gender, religion philosophy or fashion sense.

All along, these folks assumed I was black.  I think that’s kinda cool.

Drinks for my friends.

Awash in nothing but hubris, dishonesty and hypocrisy.  Ladies and gentlemen, the post modern GOP.

E-mails released today between Palin and Steve Schmidt, McCain’s best boy and chief strategist, are astonishing  in the contexts of hubris, dishonesty and hypocrisy.  The subject is her husbands seven year membership in an organization who’s primary objective is to foment for Alaska to secede from the goddamn Union.

See, I really don’t care about this kinda crap, though there is a much bigger picture.  She’s dumb.  She doesn’t get it.  Further proof this woman is not fit to clerk at a 7-11,  much less governor a state.  Will she run?  Too stupid no to.  God told Joe The Plumber to walk away and that is sad.  That could be a good time had by all.  We here at brainspank sighed wistfully in harmony.  I find that God is often wrong.

She remains the the single brightest star in the Republican sky.

Mark Sanford  seems to think he’s in a confession booth without realizing the world is listening.  This guy is gonna end up in a hospital.  I can’t help but be fascinated in a morbid way with his passion.  Still, he needs to spend some time in the garden, where there are no cameras or microphones.  He can work with his hands and nurture and caress.

Everyday it get’s harder to watch.

At this point my guess is that the Republican party’s chances of rising again are similar to that of the old South with slavery still a fundament.

Limbaugh, the Human Shitsmear in a haze of hillbilly heroin and a viagra induced priapism pronounces the Supreme Court’s 5 to 4 overturn of a unanimous decision by a panel of three appellate court judges that just happened to include Sonia Sotomayor, as nine to nothing.  Tells us to read Ginsberg for proof.  Bet he means Ruth as opposed to Allen.  Still leaves her batting about six hundred before the supremist of supremes.

The elephantine look silly attacking a woman who swings without muscle between centrist and moderate.  They’ll crap themselves and explode if Obama nominates someone left of center.  Fools.  They should at least save looking stupid for a fight that matters.  Cartoon brinksmanship.

Ever notice the lower the budget the pinker the wine?  In soft porn it looks like Kool-Aid.

Drinks for my friends.

My problem is with the shape of Norm Coleman’s head.  That and his giant teeth.  A thin lipped rictus framing nightmare white tombstones.  I’m so hoping that despite what Franken said yesterday, he’ll wade in and stir shit up.  Please.  He is painfully bright, a math jock at Harvard and very funny.  The long standing rivalries between him, Bill O’Reilly and the Human Shitsmear Limbaugh, are enough for me to sponsor him for Crew Chief of all he would survey.  His colon is clean.  He is not full of shit.

Word to Obama and the all the pantywaste Democrats.  You are out of excuses.  You now have a filibuster  proof majority.  If we don’t get health care, the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, the lobbies of AIPAC, insurance, the military industrial complex, energy and financial put in their respective places………..well then we’ll know for sure that the only difference between Democrats and Republicans is balls and spine.

Get something done.  Get anything done.  Or you suck and don’t deserve the opportunity we the the people afforded you.

The elephant = evil + balls and some vertebrae.  The donkey = a few good intentions – any vertebrae and any sack whatsoever.

The math is that simple.  The swirl of rhetoric around Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is disgusting.  Man up.  Show us a little something.  Make it so number one.  This is litmus 101.  If you can’t do this, given solid public support, we will doubt you.  Break hard to the left and run the damn ball, I for one am tired of waiting.  Show me goddamn it.

Time to come to Jesus, you so far worthless candy asses.  I am not impressed.

Is it complacency on the the part of liberals because there is no longer a a Cheney or Bush in the room with knife in hand?  I doubt it.  It’s mitigating but there is a preposterous malaise on Democrats that can can only be described as vaginaness.  Fucking pussies.  I really hate this about Democrats.  They’re all about it until it’s time to accomplish.  There is always a thousand reasons not to do something and then there is the single right reason to do it.

Meanwhile, Sarah Palin claws at relevance like a woman scorned.  Just lately she sorta challenged Obama to a foot race.  I’m sure by now you’re aware of the conflagration between her and Letterman.  Methinks she did protest too much and in so doing,  audaciously yanked her daughters into the harsh light of scrutiny she so immodestly decried.

A degree of charisma, otherwise stupid and bereft of common sense as well as humility.  Can’t completely blame her, she was a snowball’s chance in a foundry by the notion she might warm the leather in that elliptical of all offices one day.  Yeah right.  Like installing Dumbya’s retarded sister.  See how I loathe?  She’s paper thin.  She disappears at ninety degrees off axis.  The epitome of grandiose insincerity.  What bothers me is how dumb she is.  Forgive me but she is a stupid cunt.

Big bag full of mashed up jack ass right there.  -Keith O.

“I remember as it were a meal ago”

“Said Tommy the Cat as he reeled back to clear whatever foreign
matter may have nestled its way into His mighty throat.
Many a fat alley rat had met its demise while staring point
blank down the cavernous barrel of this awesome prowling machine.
Truly a wonder of nature this urban predator.
Tommy the cat had many a story to tell,
but it was a rare occasion such as this that he did.

“She came slidin’ down the alleyway like butter drippin’ off a hot biscuit.
The aroma, the mean scent, was enough to arouse suspicion in
even the oldest of Tigers that hung around the hot spot in those days.
The sight was beyond belief. Many a head snapped for double
even triple, takes as this vivacious feline made her her way into the
delta of the alleyway where the most virile of the young tabbys were
known to hang out. They hung in droves. Such a multitude of
masculinity could only be found in One place… and that was
O’malley’s Alley. The air was thick with cat calls (no pun intended)
but not even a muscle in her neck did twitch as she sauntered up into
the heart of the alley. She knew what she wanted. She was lookin’
for that stud bull, the he cat. And that was me.
Tommy the Cat is my name and I say unto thee…

Say baby do you wanna lay down by me”  -Primus

Drinks for my friends.

Michael Jackson.  I’m a fan.  Brilliant pop composer.  Tragic.  Bona fide ElvisBelushiAnnaNicoleChrisFarley syndrome.  I don’t believe he was a pedophile but he sure did some stupid shit.  I can’t but think his persecution and prosecution for child molestation tore at his most human fibers.  It really was his proverbial straw.  It was then  he began to fold.

I’d always kinda liked the music, but only in the periphery.  He sealed the deal with me when he let  Eddie Van Halen tear it up on what would be one of his biggest songs.  Brilliant move.  Gave all us naive white boys an open door.  Brave if you acks me.

He was damaged and Papa Joe is clearly a sociopath.  The face is of evil.  I see an asshole.  What disturbs me the most is the inevitable slow but hot coal lambaste by the media.  Sheezus.  Randi Rhodes and Tom Hartman were all over it on Air America today.  When it gets that deep, it’s because they hafta.

His star was likely the biggest ever seen by earthlings, despite some rather advanced oxidation.

In death as in life, more than anything else, the world’s most accomplished and beleaguered defendant of celebrity obsession.

It’s true that I am of fan, but I’m not overly sympathetic.  At the end of the day, he was the leading architect of his own demise.  I ultimately believe anyone with the aforementioned syndrome knows exactly enough of what they do to understand just exactly what they’re doing.  Add Kurt Cobain to the list.  No piss mocking of the burden of celebrity.  Fame flat out fucks with most people who end up in the light.  It fucked with Michael Jackson as early as five years old.  This end as predictable as always for people with this syndrome.

His affliction was chronic and acute.  You know what they say about walking in a man’s shoes.  Truism.

And yet, the tragedy.  There is family, friends and fans.

In other news, Samuel Wurzelbacher, in his current role as Joe The Plumber, graced us with his prowess for history today by reminding us that our founding father’s knew full well that Socialism and Communism were not at all efficacious.  Kinda hard to figure how he can say that with such conviction as neither concept was to be born for another half century.  He went on to suggest with the certitude of round headed jackass that Senator Chris Dodd should be lynched.  More than once.  Every time I see this nimrod on television I flash back to projectile vomiting as a kid with the flu.  Specifically the aftertaste of a partially digested dinner and the corrosive agents of digestion in my windpipe.

Having said that, I owe Joe.  He’s a bit player in the neoconservative production that caused me to vomit so often that I’m no longer traumatized by it.  Now it’s pretty much ‘Oh Liz Cheney is on, pardon me while I paint this hedge with the contents of my upper gastrointestinal tract’.  He’s a goddamn plebian narcissist.  And a fucking fool for thinking he has something to say.

“The Tennessee stud was long and lean
The color of the sun and his eyes were green
He had the nerve and he had the blood
And there never was a hoss like the Tennessee stud” -Tennessee Ernie Ford

I’m sticking to the current events thing.  This just in from an old friend:

Hey Mike,

I’m writing you in confidence, just to let you know what kind of trouble my ex is.

she asked me if I had ever heard of the Powerhouse. I said “NO”,

she then told me that you had told her that I was there the night the bar tender showed you her oral talents. And that we both got service on the bar.

And then she told me that you once had a cocaine problem and it’s back again.

She said that you contacted her directly by email and that Misty is also still in contact with her.

I went and looked at your blog and put two and two together.  = trouble with Capital T

later

****

I respond:

Sheezus Crap!  How’d you end up with this kinda crazy?  I’m spooked.  My stalker and you’re stalker activate their wonder twin powers.  I don’t believe I was ever at the Powerhouse with you.  Blow was never my thing.  It’s merely the wrong direction for me.  Pot and booze are my elective poisons.  I don’t mind a little xanax or vicodin.  This woman is crapping in public nuts.  Obviously when I first engaged her, I had no idea who she was.  I want nothing to do with this.  We are longtime friends ****, let me know what I can do and/or keep me out of it.

Tell the bitch we were complete blow hounds and routinely got our stingers moistened on the bar, in front of the juke, in the bathroom, the alley……..

Take care

Then there’s this:

I was in another medical marijuana dispensary today, the terminal I’d brought acted like it hadn’t been downloaded.  My name was on the box as well as that of the business.  Still had to download it twice, adjust the time and date and finally ended upon a conference call with our technology partner.  Got it done while the staff did bong rips in the back office.  I like stoned folks more than drunk folks, but even the stoned ones are a pain in the ass.  To be fair, I like these people quite a bit.

My one pair of Kenneth Cole dress shoes were fucking killing me.  My feet ached ached to my knees.  What should have taken ten minutes took two hours.  This on top of the dance I’d done with my superiors a few hours earlier to deposit funds in my girlfriends account so she can pay her state bar license, among other things, after she helped me with my rent.  This and a just now phone call telling me she’s still $400 short.  If I had a gun, I’d be tasting steel.

Anybody want Spiderman #22, X-men #94 or an original A/DA flanger?

Drinks for my friends.

After almost too long, I needed to step up to the plate again.  I lobbied the powers that were, Mark Harvey, and got a gig in the mix room with Ggggarth Richardson, he stutters, and Joe Barresi on an L7 mix.  Garth producing.

I knew Joe and Garth pretty well.  Garth called me the demo king and later the donut king.  He insisted that would be my credit and I dared him to do it.  Joe and Garth brought consistent business to A&M and Garth was part of the Canadian contingent.  There always seemed to be a disproportionate number of Canucks in music production but I liked them all.  Randy Staub and Bill Kennedy both mentored me.  Bob Ezrin (Pink Floyd, The Wall) is a Canadian and he is one brilliant man.  Google him, you’ll see.  Garth did the first Rage Against The Machine record, arguably their best.

Joe became the shit.  Queens of The Stone Age.  Tool.  Google the talented bastard.  We were born on the exact same day you know.

The Canadians made great engineers and producers.  Google Bob Rock.

Garth looked at me on the morning of the first day and said with unmistakable seriousness, “Mikey, if you do nothing else on this session, I want you to set it up so that every time I hit rewind or stop on the multitracks, the audio from the hockey game comes up.”  The finals were already on the television mounted between the massive monitors.

I ran a mult, from SMPTE  time code always on track 24, from the sync head to a gate,  some fifty five milliseconds before the playback head.  Gave me a five one hundredths of a second advantage.  Trigger to open on rewind and stop, but duck on playback when the gate saw signal of a certain amplitude.   SMPTE time code was of a very consistent amplitude..  A mere threshold issue.  I brought it up on a fader.  In the interest of thorough, I strapped another gate across the insert to close while the mix was playing.  Kinda the same chain but in reverse.  I still took care to mute it when we were printing mixes.

I think they were impressed.  Didn’t think a rookie like me had the chops.  It took me about five minutes; I’d been stealth engineering on my own for some time but hadn’t ever been responsible for maintaining lock on two analog multitracks.  Ahead of the curve and behind it.  Story of my life.  Bane of my existence .

There was only one Canadian I could never muster any affection for.  Scott Humphrey.  Pro Tools hack and  pompous asshole.  His wikipedia page has him as an “American  record producer/mix engineer”.  Wore his money and privilege on his forehead.  Maybe he is an American.  That would make sense.  I’m an honorary Canadian.  This prick did nothing but look down his nose at me.  I never saw him touch a fader much less mix, engineer or produce a single note.  An expectorate absent any acuity with phase coherency.  He was a dick.

A band of Jersey Goombas was across the hall in studio D.  Biohazard.  Dipshits.  Evan Seinfeld is a consumate douchebag and  now he’s married to Tera Patrick.  One of these things is not like the other.  My buddy Rick and I had the good fortune to clown his clueless ass about a decade later.

I have a plethora of tales about the Canadians, Biohazard and L7.  It gets better.  Stay with me.  It gets better.

Drinks for my friends.

I’ve just discovered Oscar Mayer cheese dogs.  A big delish.  I eagerly anticipate test driving them with a variety of condiments including Claussen dill spears and of course, Big Bob’s Bleu.  Countdown to angioplasty.  Harbinger of heartburn and a guaranteed culinary delightful.  I need to buy an onion.  Excellent texture and authentic whang.  Got me plenty of ketchup and mustard.

Can’t always afford those smoked white turkey franks from Ballpark.  I’m a whore for good tasting nourishment.  Will need to explore cheap asian noodles again soon.  Another jar of peanut butter.

I’ll need a glass of Woolite, a glass of Kim Crawford sauvignon blanc.  The Crawford is the shit.  Very grapefruit with good acid.  Order salt & pepper calamari and the seared ahi appetizer at PF Changs.  If they don’t have the Crawford, throw a fit and opt for the Estancia pinot grigio.  Trust me, I know how to gamble.  Do this by yourself and bring a book.  Sit at the bar, it’s lovely.

I have an odd fascination with Ernest Borgnine.  I named a room in my house after him.  I like when he’s spooky, he has the creepiest grin.

Drove by Pink’s today.  Marveled at the line.  Romanced by the aroma.  Lovely perfume guaranteeing a gastrointestinal malaise.  I’ll suffer that but not the absurd volume of zombies waiting online.  I hate them.  Ordinary people.

My first and last hang in Hollywood, The Powerhouse.  On Highland just north of Hollywood blvd., on the east side of the street.

When my session ended before two am, you could find me there.  They were cool enough to put my records on the jukebox.

Bartenders were, SJ, Steve, Gary and Tracy.  I’ve long been a compulsive hand washer, so upon entering, I’d head straight to the bathroom to sate the sticky handed urge.  More often than not I’d emerge to find a giant, dry as the desert Bombay Sapphire martini, three olives up at least, in a punchbowl of a pina colada glass waiting for me.  I usually had something to read.

You don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here,  shouted just before two, accompanied by a ringing bell.  I was exempt.  Once the door was locked, the onus was on me to make my own drinks.

Never cut to the guy getting pasted by the train at the end.  That’s chickenshit.

Old wooden bar on the left, red naugahyde booths on the right and shitty green shag underfoot.  Pinball and a juke at the back end.  Steve was a musician, Gary an aspiring comic, SJ a Republican from Texas and Tracy had amazing oral skills and a very nice rack.  I brought the Gotohells with me one night after a gig at Al’s Bar along with a journalist from Flipside and the six of us drank all night while the journalist conducted her interview.  Whiskey and pitchers of beer.  The bill was twenty four dollars.  Quid pro qou, I left a hundred on the bar.

Got my dick sucked on that bar with a nickel plated .38 snub nose above my head.  Tracy had mad skills and a gun.  It was her birthday and she wore some ridiculous hippie buckskin bra with feathers.  Ridiculous but it stirred my loins.  She locked the door and only her and I were left.  One thing led to another.  Paradise by the jukebox light.  Mad skills.

I actually got up and did a short set on drums with some band one night.  Gesticulating the best I could.  Killing myself softly.  I was a shitty drummer.  I’m lucky to have sucked because it informed my engineering and production skills.  My own suckage was positive stuff.  Invaluable.  A seriously penis whipped drink.

My goal is a deluxe apartment in the sky.

My Sharona is as close to a perfect pop song as it gets.  Great production.  The solo rips.  Fuckin slays me.

Listening to Primus lends me largesse in the form of gristle.

I visited the Powerhouse a few years back.  Despite the fact that Joe Power had finally  sold the place and it had been remodeled into strip mall austerity, I was with a lovely woman and had a swell time.

But it was absent vibe.  You can never go home again.  My heart sank a little.  My start yanked a little.  Nostalgic for the salad days.  I just remembered how much I like snowglobes.  My eyes have begun to fail me.  I need reading glasses.

I want to be Walter Matthau when I get old.  It’s a good goal.

Drinks for my friends.

I ain’t askin for much.

I always liked the word gendarme so I looked it up.  Big disappointment.

I’ve long since recognized the appeal of wealth.  I admit, I like shiny things.  Actually, I like handsome objects.  Artful globes to leviathan machinery.

Used to be I coveted wealth.  Then I made a little money and indulged myself a little.  Bought a nice car.  Developed a taste for caviar and champagne.  Good wine.  A ridiculously expensive stereo.  A house.  Vacations.

It all kinda fell apart, slow enough so the way down wasn’t crazy in my face but just enough to make me puke now and then.

There are magazines still reasonably popular, devoted to things most of us can’t afford or wouldn’t, even if we had the scratch.

I don’t covet the pretty things so much as the freedom.  A nice lunch.  Healthy food is more expensive.  I like tomatoes.  Sauces.  Appetizers and good wine.

I want a condo in the sky above the dirty streets.  My life’s trajectory has been odd at best.  One of the things we’re supposed to do here is distinguish ourselves.  I feel I’ve done that but would like to continue.  Cook up some pork maple sausages, dip them in Big Bob’s Bleu and you’re courting intestinal methane pressure.  The antithesis of fiber and nature’s broom but still an efficient evacuator of the colon with many a loud report.

My two biggest questions are why are we here?

And are we really here?

I often think one’s life is either a good mosaic or a bad one.  Subject to trends and popular opinion.  All of us beholding to what is vogue  What is not.

I’m trying to point to how closely we dance with chaos.  A true economic implosion would have families and entire clans grouping and sharing resources.  There’s a chance that’s not a bad idea.  It could just be the most important skill my mother can pass to me is how to grow and preserve produce.  Agriculture is about to become more important.  Dad taught me to shoot but I need a refresher.

Imagine a world without glutinous salad dressings.

I want to talk about bars now.

I feel obligated to start with the Whitehorse.  Dark and sinister.  Late eighties, early nineties.  Just north of Sunset on Western, east side of the street across from an OSH.

Pretty crazy neighborhood, rather insane clientele.  Pimps, prostitutes, trannies and drunks.  Drug dealers, criminals and musicians.  Not odd at all for a cockroach to skitter down the bar dodging the cheesy candlelit, white plastic net wrapped red glass candle holders.  I figured it was the light they feared, not the heat.  “There goes another cola nut”, I’d say.  Diane, the lovely but flawed bartendress who always wore rosewater perfume, would smile and bat her eyes while protesting she hadn’t seen it.  Had never in fact, seen a single bug on the bar or anywhere else ever.

D.S. Morey.  Adorable.  Lying to me for sport.

She was gorgeous.  Blue pools for eyes.  Voluptuous.  Serious tits and a Coop Girl frame.  Smart clever and vulnerable.  Gorgeous tattoos on pale skin.  Blond with a yellow tooth at the very front of her head.  She was a reformed meth addict from Traverse City, Michigan.  We got very close.  She put my records on the jukebox.  I believe we were afraid of each other.  She was fragile and I was timid.  We went on a few actual dates.  The first one, she watched me get drunk and I took her to Denny’s, the second I took her to see Naked Lunch and tried to kiss her.  She resisted my overture and politely insisted that I not embarrass myself.

I was crushed.

A few weeks later she took a lover and told me I just wasn’t mean enough.

I wondered a long time before I understood what she meant.  I drank cheap whiskey in those days.  Long neck Budweisers.  I recorded punk rock.

There was a framed picture on an end table in her apartment from her days as an addict.  She and another woman on a rooftop at dawn.  The sun breaking behind them as they celebrated how fucked up they were.  Her hair in braids and colorful ornaments.  Christmas on a summer morning.  Huge awesome smiles.  A light blue sky and clouds pink and orange.  I asked about it and she had nothing to say.  She was ashamed of it and that’s probably why it was there.

It was so very sublime to me.  Finally, I actually asked for it.  She told me no way could I have it.  Not long after, her apartment late at night, the photo in the same place but the glass was broken and the picture torn.

The Whitehorse was completely destroyed in the ’94 earthquake.  It had been my bar of choice because the bartender was lovely and fascinating and the bars in my neighborhood were no place for a big long haired white boy.

Oh Diane Morey.

Drinks for my friends.

The salient point I’m about to serve up is not original.  It is not mine, I just happen to enthusiastically agree.

Names have not been changed to protect a single asshole.

Off we go.

If I hear another Republican dipshit criticize Obama’s reaction to the the Iranian election clusterfuck, when they all know as well as anyone else, for us to intervene or interfere anymore than we have is counter to foreign policy 101, with a country like Iran who’s history we’ve meddled in disastrously, I’ll projectile puke.

Shut up you idiots.  Our Man’s course of action is obvious, informed and reasonable.  What would you have him do?

Ridiculous and absurd.  Their own people asking us not to wade into their affairs again.  They are grateful for our support.  Yet they understand better than the royal “we”, that any influence perceived as American fuel in this struggle will dilute it and ultimately disease it.

Duh.

Iranians and Americans cannot afford for American government to be a component of this struggle.  It would ruin it.  It’s that simple.

The douchebags that persist in shouting that crap from the roof tops aren’t doing favors for anyone.  McCain, Bill Bennett, Lindsey Graham and Newt.  A message that only falls on the ears of the great unwashed.  The lowest common denominator.  The deaf.  The stupid.  The under informed.  The arrogant jingo assholes who think it’s our duty to force our bullshit on every other camper.

Work with me, it was this exact thinking that got us into the trouble we’re in now.

I’m here to tell you that terrorists will not be killing you in your bed.  They really are the least of our worries and even that’s an accident.  If you’re on a list as a suspected terrorist, your biggest problem will be boarding a commercial airliner.  The least of your inconveniences are buying guns or explosives.  If you are an evil doer (love those two words), your best bet is some destruction at home as opposed to interstate travel.  Our advice to you is to shit where you eat.  The current terrorist watch list of more than a million members, does not prevent anyone from purchasing guns or even explosives, interstate travel however, is far more difficult.

You bet.  Yeah baby we’re on it.  Fear not, the NRA has your back.

It’s a goddamn joke and we are pigs.

God has not even dick to do with it.

An election was stolen from the Iranian people.  They are indignant and I understand.  I think they just might be an example to us.  C’mon.  Their bravery is awesome.  We have been giant vaginas.  Forgive the gender aspect.  I’m just saying.

We should stay out of it for obvious reasons and let them show us how it’s done.

I’m getting tired of American hubris.  Who the fuck do we think we are?

Drinks for my friends.

More than a little pensive.

The citizens of Iran have a profoundly legitimate beef.  One of the best kind.  Noble and justified.  An obviously rigged election.  Blatant.  Ridiculous.  The turn out was over 120%.  Bullshit is the given.

Tomorrow may inform us of eventual fate.  The Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei,  deigned to wade in today on the Sabbath, by vehicle of his scheduled sermon.  Just another day of worship.  He was clear:  Those who “take wrong measures which are harmful, they will be held accountable for all violence.” He called President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad “the absolute victor” in last week’s election…..”  -CNN.com

This sucks.

I’m spooked.  The difference between these human events and Tiananmen Square for example, is that despite the Iranian government’s game face and perseverant campaign to control information, this revolution just may be televised.  Forgive my trite.  I’m not here to obviate something so big and ripe.  I fear what happens next.  Both sides are more than aware that the entire world watches.

The chances of a fistfight are always multiplied by an audience.  Always.

The Ayatollah didn’t merely draw a line in the sand.  He came out with serious lumber.  He tells the people of Iran that they are welcome to test his bat.  He tells them it will be ugly.  I’m really afraid of that.  I think it’s quite likely.  Man, I hope not.  Did you know that Iran is arguably the most pro-American country in the entire region?  These people are in trouble and I doubt they will walk away.  There will be blood.  There already has been.

Iranians are not pussies.

Our Man’s facility with it all has been pitch perfect.  He understands that any movement in Iran perceived as being fomented or even endorsed by the US government is a guarantee it will sink under that weight.  The asshat Republicans shouting jingoistic bullshit from the rooftops are posturing with lamentable irresponsibility.  Man I hate these pricks.  No compassion, zero sensibility, reckless abandon in pursuit of grandeur.  Shut the fuck up.

Iran is a modern society.  It has a vibrant and youthful population, progressive by regional standards.  Amazingly, a huge chunk of them don’t hate us.  Really.

My fear is that the Iranian people will suffer for whatever they do tomorrow.  For years.

It is the covert option that most media fails to talk about.  I’m afraid they will be picked off at random, regardless of participation, until, you know, morale improves.  I don’t see tanks but I do see terror.  For years.  They know full well, both sides get it.  Tomorrow is going to be interesting.

See, we’re all just citizens of the world.  After the sun impregnates the horizon and the stars come out, the day is done and we are all the same.  We really are all the same.  I live in a big city so ethnic diversity is but a part of my coat of many colors.  Whether your thing is prayer or the power of positive thinking, it’s time to do a little dance.

Wisdom, safety and support to the people of Iran.

And, um, fuck the Ayatollah.

Drinks for my friends.

Today I learned of the existence of baconnaise.

This brought courtesy of The Daily Show.

I’m broke as fuck but I’m headed to Ralph’s first thing to get me some.  I’ve still got quarters.  Sounds like the world’s ultimate condiment to me.  Oh my.  The possibilities boggle.  With french fries or on a sandwich.  Combined with sour cream and chives for dipping.  Inside a doughnut.  Fish & chips?  With a squirt of lemon?  This shit is huge.  Could be the best thing since Bob’s Bleu Cheese Dressing.

Nevermind I said that.  Blasphemy.

Sheezus, I’m ashamed.

So you know, I’m pretty sure the Bob’s gave me the crapanacious the other night when I combined it with generic Doritos.  We’re talking volume and velocity.  I was impressed.  Prodigious thrust.

Baconnaise.  Fuck me.  Gonna be a really big show.

More important was a segment that succeeded in contrasting the reality of the Iranian people with what we’ve been sold and bought under Dumbya.  Most of us were already aware of this despicable gulf between a dictated perception and actual opinions of the people and the events on the ground in Iran.

Don’t forget the great unwashed.

McCain infamously sang the bomb, bomb, bomb……bomb bomb Iran song while campaigning for President just last year.  The Bush administration had an embarrassingly obvious hard on for Iran for at least it’s last four years.  The same kind your Black Lab or Irish Setter wags in front of everybody at every gathering you ever  host.

I like girl cats.

This is why they fear Obama.  It’s hope.  And fear.  And no more of that other shit.  With dignity and wisdom he stays out of it almost entirely.  Has the State Department ask Twitter to reschedule some maintenance hours.  He’s on it and staying out of it.  Nice.

The net effect really does reflect the quality of cheese in hand.  Smooth.

What we have here is a failure to communicate.

Then a successful communication because of a complex humiliation.  The previous administration is really hoping we don’t remember glimpsing their lipstick penises at picnics.  Iran is not a monster.  They want the same things we do.  To live long and prosper.  In peace.

The unwashed loathe Obama because he’s seen their penises and they haven’t seen his.  They would have him be the Bull in the China shop in Iran.  They pretend to not understand how stupid that is.  To not remember the chaos that was wrought from their ludicrous lockstep loyalty to the biggest collection of assholes in history.

Refuse to remember how we were on the verge of war with yet another nation the represented no threat at all to us.

Goddamn these guys are stupid.

All this illumination for the masses from Comedy Central.  As opposed to any news network.  That really is my point here.  So much energy spent to dehumanize these people and they show us in a flash that they may just be more courageous and sincere than we can boast of being.

We are far from real.  Not even close.  The Iranian people show us.  Hundreds of thousands marching silently.  When the guns of the government appear, they sit where they stood, in silence.   Tens of thousands.  Hundreds of thousands.  Awesome.

The disparity between  Mirhossein Mousavi and Ahmadinejad is far narrower than between  Obama and McCain.  Forgive me, at least on the surface.

The most compelling aspects are not on the evening news.  Most of US don’t even know.  A whole row of teeth that will be given away here.  Twenty million people will chew wrong if they don’t play this game exactly right.

One way or another.

Courage be to you people.

I am impressed.

Drinks for my friends.

I keep dreaming I’m going over a cliff in something.  Every night.  Sometimes it’s not a big deal and sometimes I’m gonna die.  I’m always going over a cliff.

The scariest thing about “Man In Picture” is that he just keeps coming.  He never stops.  Once he begins, it never ends.  He is always there.  Relentless.  Nothing to do but deal with him directly until I win or lose.  You should look it up on this very blog under that title in quotes.  “Man In Picture”.  On the right hand side under categories.  It’s the first draft of a novel I intend to start a rewrite on very soon.

It’s crude and raw with an under developed plot and narrative.  The bones are there though.

It was disturbing for me when I wrote it.  I’m going to make it a book soon.  Now would be a good time for you all to weigh in and tell me what you think it needs.  I’m pretty sure I already know.

The worse sensation I can imagine is of thick ropey hairs bursting through my dermis.  Sharp muscular rigid worms.  I see it happening slower than in a movie.  Way slower.  My flesh opens at a rate that allows me to hear it.  The sound of knuckles popping, Rice Krispies and heavy wet fabric tearing.  Canvas, maybe burlap.

Blood flies and floats because it’s happening so slow.

It sears, aches and itches.

It burns.  It crawls.

Sometimes it toggles between hard pleasure and soft pain before it talks me in and out of a waking nightmare.

This happens to me in a hospital bed under a dim blue light.  I’m there for another life threatening reason.  Flesh eating virus.  I’m already horrified as the disease eats it’s way up my torso.  Now this.  There’s a sheet over me but with each smack and crackle the linens bloom red.

Saw something hanging from his ear until I realized it was the zipper on his coat.

Join me.

Drinks for my friends.

Today the DOJ, in support of the DOMA  (Defense Of Marriage Act), issued a brief using language invoking pedophilia and incest, eerily reminiscent of the vituperation vomited by the religious right ad nauseum since the dawn of the cerebral cortex.

Puns intended.

So much for change.

I don’t care if Obama was aware of this or not.  The only acceptable action here is swift, unambiguous refutation.  Obama and his administration need to get in front of this crap like yesterday.  It’s not just bullshit, it’s madness.  Best case scenario is Obama talking about this before I get out of bed.  The time difference alone gives him a hell of a head start.  Time to show me something Mr. Fierce Defender.

Enough.

Let this pass at your peril.  Hope will turn to doubt.

While we’re on the subject of Our Man, I was none too thrilled by the glaring omissions in his remarks in front of the AMA today.  It was a good speech, but no substantive reckoning that big pharma and big insurance are hopelessly infected by avarice and therefore ground zero for reform and regulation.  No mention of what an inefficient, bureaucratic clusterfuck the FDA is.  These items are at the very root of the problem and no reform has a chance at efficacy without force being brought to bear on them.

Blowing up balloons with holes in them.

The sad truth lies in the why.  Along with the AMA, pharmaceutical and insurance companies are championed by some of the biggest and most influential lobbying cabals in Washington.  If there were stars on K street or Pennsylvania Avenue like Hollywood Boulevard, two thirds of them would be dedicated to these filthy bastards.  For all you sniveling morons who live in such fear of communism, here is a bonafide  Red Menace for you.

Welcome to the plutocracy.  This thing is way bigger than just stubborn Republicans.

Along with energy, campaign finance reform and the military industrial complex, these are the windmills I expect Our Man to be tipping.  That’s why I voted for him.

We loves us some Bill Maher.  Maher said the other night in his New Rules segment:  “…..I’m glad that Obama is president, but the “Audacity of Hope” part is over. Right now, I’m hoping for a little more audacity”.

Me, I’m looking for those balls of zirconia  I thought I glimpsed on the campaign trail.  Dude, please don’t Jimmy Carter us.

Remember how I was pissing and moaning about pumps on lotion and soap bottles not long ago?  Well, for the record, adding water to any of the soap dispensing ones is pretty viable.

Sometimes I think all Americans are either corrupt or stupid.  Often both, but rarely neither.

Drinks for my friends.