"Sunday Bloody Sunday" - Dubya Style

This first came my way a few weeks ago courtesy of Jesse, Maker of Huts. It's been making the rounds at YT, so I figured it was worth posting. Pretty clever...

Had Enough/Can't Get Enough #4

Yup. That time again. And this week I've totally Had Enough:

• Talk of Britney or anything Britney-related. Seriously. Enough already, guys. Could we all please just not? ...Please?
• Statements beginning with: "My whole thing is..."
• Oscar hype
• My morning commute

But, for some reason I just Can't Get Enough:

• John Varvatos' Men's Collection for Fall 2007
• Paris Commune. Took The Missus out to dinner Friday night. Jeez Louise. I had the pork chop stuffed with goat cheese, figs, and carmelized shallots with truffle oil mashed potatoes and a glass of Chilean carmenere and I'm still not over it. The kind of meal makes you want to cry. Make sure you visit the Rouge Wine Bar downstairs first where you will personally be served by Val Kilmer's super-nice gay identical twin who also happens to be their resident sommelier.
• This movie, which we're still talking about
• The Sea & Cake - "One Bedroom"

Having A Coke With You

is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irún, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne
or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelona
partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastian
partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yoghurt
partly because of the fluoresent orange tulips around the birches
partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuary

it is hard to believe when I'm with you that there can be anything as still as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary
when right in front of it in the warm New York 4 o'clock light we are drifting back and forth between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles

and the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just paint
you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them I look at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world
except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it's in the Frick which thank heavens you haven't gone to yet so we can go together the first time

and the fact that you move so beautifully more or less takes care of Futurism
just as at home I never think of the Nude Descending a Staircase or at a rehearsal a single drawing of Leonardo or Michelangelo that used to wow me
and what good does all the research of the Impressionists do them when they never got the right person to stand near the tree when the sun sank
or for that matter Marino Marini when he didn't pick the rider as carefully as the horse

it seems they were all cheated of some marvellous experience which is not going to go wasted on me which is why I am telling you about it

-Frank O'Hara (1960)

There's no denying that this is a contrived consumerist holiday. I get that. But today finds me thinking of The Missus and the above poem. It's one of my all-time favorites and was read with aplomb by the honorable K. P. O'Fagan II at our wedding. I've always loved the idea of Valentine's Day, and given that this is the TENTH such holiday we've spent together, I'm finding myself ruminating on it even more intently than I usually do.

So, raise a glass with me and let's all give a toast to my lovely, lovely wife. "Alla salute", baby. "Cin, cin..."

The Ministry of Silly Walks

A) Because it's one of my all-time favorite Python sketches.
2) Because I haven't posted in a week and it was easy.
D) Because I really needed the lift today and..
D) Because you do to.

Pay close attention to Terry Jones as John Cleese passes him in the hallway. If you don't piss yourself, I'll give you five bucks...

Kanga's Got The Blues

MOLLY IVINS 1944-2007

Molly Ivins was a close friend of my wife's family. She and my father-in-law were deskmates at Columbia journalism school about a thousand years ago and remained close ever since. She had a huge influence on both Kate and her sister, Molly. (Whose name is no coincidence)

I had the pleasure of meeting her a couple years ago when she was on a book tour that came through New York in support of "Bushwacked: Life in George W. Bush's America". She took Kate and me out to breakfast. I found her to be truly warm, charming, extraordinarily quick and absolutely hysterical.

She's also fantastically quotable. Below is a picture of Kate and Molly after our breakfast at the Plaza followed by some selected quotes from over the years. She was a real tiger. An outspoken liberal firebrand and fighter of the good fight. She will be greatly missed...


Some gems from Molly Ivins...

• The first rule of holes: when you're in one, stop digging.

• What you need is sustained outrage...there's far too much unthinking respect given to authority.

• I have been attacked by Rush Limbaugh on the air, an experience somewhat akin to being gummed by a newt. It doesn't actually hurt, but it leaves you with slimy stuff on your ankle.

• Think of something to make the ridiculous look ridiculous.

• The thing about democracy, beloveds, is that it is not neat, orderly, or quiet. It requires a certain relish for confusion.

• Satire is traditionally the weapon of the powerless against the powerful.

• There are two kinds of humor. One kind that makes us chuckle about our foibles and our shared humanity -- like what Garrison Keillor does. The other kind holds people up to public contempt and ridicule -- that's what I do.

• I believe that ignorance is the root of all evil. And that no one knows the truth.

• You can't ignore politics, no matter how much you'd like to.

• What stuns me most about contemporary politics is not even that the system has been so badly corrupted by money. It is that so few people get the connection between their lives and what the bozos do in Washington and our state capitols. Politics is not a picture on a wall or a television sitcom that you can decide you don't much care for.

• I believe in practicing prudence at least once every two or three years.

• I still believe in Hope - mostly because there's no such place as Fingers Crossed, Arkansas.

• I am not anti-gun. I'm pro-knife. Consider the merits of the knife. In the first place, you have to catch up with someone in order to stab him. A general substitution of knives for guns would promote physical fitness. We'd turn into a whole nation of great runners. Plus, knives don't ricochet. And people are seldom killed while cleaning their knives.

• Any nation that can survive what we have lately in the way of government, is on the high road to permanent glory.