Dry drunk gets wet?

Heard on the radio about Bush getting drunk at the Olympics. Googled "bush drunk at olympics" and got lots of hits. Here are a representative couple: one & two.

I have always known that Bush was the classic "dry drunk," which in many cases is worse that a drinking, high-bottom, alcoholic. But the last couple of years I have been hearing many stories about his drinking again. Like all alcoholics, dry and wet, Bush has no sense of responsibility for his actions, or any ability to contemplate the consequences of his whims and caprices. For most alcoholics the price is paid by their immediate families and circle of friends. But in Bush's case, we in this country, and too many around the world, are paying the sad toll. I want a President, not an alcoholic father.

Some of you might wonder, "How can he get as drunk as he looks in those pictures when there is constant scrutiny on him?" I smile at this question. As any FOB can tell you, secret drinking is an art form. Let's see, in this case, I would imagine George did a little pre-event packing, downing a lot of vodka from his secret stash in private, before leaving for the event. This usually works fairly well except when the event is going to be long and you decide you have to do "heavy packing" to make it through. The result is that it hits you full force hours later causing you to not be able to get out of your frigging seat! Also, notice in some of the pictures the "innocent" water bottle. Oh, this is a prime alkie trick. Funny how vodka looks just like water, so you can literally be drinking openly and believing no one is the wiser.

Lord help us all! This can't end a minute too soon for me.

~ tom

Here's what we need a lot more of...

I just watched my DVR recording of last Thursday's Daily Show. The Stewart monologue is brilliant, and just the kind of thing that is an anecdote to the problems I discuss in my previous post. If you did not see it, check it out. The real stuff doesn't start until about 2 minutes in, but hang in there. Stewart just nails it.

~ tom

A soccer metaphor...

Lately I've been a bit depressed over the way this campaign is going. I keep thinking that the polls should not be this close, and I have this gnawing, inexorable feeling that the Obama presidency is slipping away.

I reminds me of over 20 years ago when I used to play in an "over-thirty" soccer league. My team was a bunch of guys who had not grown up with the game -- most of us had come to it by watching our kids play and then getting interested in playing. We were, in a word, the gringos of the league, winning only a couple of games over the three years I played. We were pitted against teams of guys who had grown up playing the game and each of those teams was a specific ethnic group. There were several Latin teams, a German team who had their own Mercedes bus, and an Irish team of skinny guys who talked trash the whole game and played mean.

My point is that every once in a while our team would get ahead, maybe even by two goals. But as the game progressed I had this gnawing, inexorable feeling that we were going to lose. The opponents played very aggressively, not being "gentlemen" at all. They pushed, elbowed, tripped, gamed the ref, faked injuries to get the foul call, etc. Most of the spectators dug it, or at least accepted it. And, of course we always lost in the end, no matter how hard we fought to hang on to our lead.

But the worst part was that we gringos did not even know HOW to do that stuff, and if we tried, we were so blatant and unschooled that the ref would call a foul or give us a yellow card!

I see the same thing in this campaign. We are just too fair --but we are also too inexperienced in the ways that ultimately win the game. I could cite countless examples of what I'm saying ranging from "Barack is an elitest" to the flag pin, to "he voted against the surge" to "he didn't visit the troops," and (the fake injury here folks) "he dealt the race card off the bottom." Lots of pushing, elbowing, tripping, and gaming the ref (media & press), right?

Shit, I just realized, we need a Pele.

Grimly yours,

Tom

After the crash...

My five-year-old Dell computer crashed a couple of days ago - total hard disk failure. I ended up buying a new computer, and it's taken me a while to restore all my backed-up data, and reload programs.

This new machine is a screamer, with six gig of RAM, quad core processor, and a 640 gig hard drive. Price? $750! I can't believe how the prices have gone down so much and how powerful the machines are becoming at those low prices.

I'll be back blogging now.

T.

Prick up your ears! Winwood's back!

Holy moley!! I have just listened to Steve Winwood's new album, "Nine Lives." Five friggin' stars children! I've always loved the man's voice, and his B-3 licks cook while never being overblown. I could go on about this album, but here is a review that says it all. (Be sure to click on the "more" link to read the whole review).

This album has: Top-notch musicians just playing their asses off, great new songs, Winwood in full voice, and fabulous engineering and production quality.

Need I say more?

T.

Lives in the Balance

Hi all.

Back from our place at Tahoe with my daughter and her family, and then some more time with them down here at home in Alameda -- love those grand kids!!! They flew back to Seattle on Saturday, so now I have some time to blog again.

I was out walking my dog today, listening to my MP3 player on "shuffle" when what to my wondering ears should appear, but Jackson Browne singing "Lives in the Balance." I was truly stunned by just how relevant and powerful the song is today, even though Jackson wrote it in 1986. Here are the lyrics, but do yourself a favor and try to find it in your music collection or online and listen to it as performed by Jackson and his always-fine musicians.

I've been waiting for something to happen
For a week or a month or a year
With the blood in the ink of the headlines
And the sound of the crowd in my ear
You might ask what it takes to remember
When you know that you've seen it before
Where a government lies to a people
And a country is drifting to war

And there's a shadow on the faces
Of the men who send the guns
To the wars that are fought in places
Where their business interest runs

On the radio talk shows and the T.V.
You hear one thing again and again
How the U.S.A. stands for freedom
And we come to the aid of a friend
But who are the ones that we call our friends--
These governments killing their own?
Or the people who finally can't take any more
And they pick up a gun or a brick or a stone
There are lives in the balance
There are people under fire
There are children at the cannons
And there is blood on the wire

There's a shadow on the faces
Of the men who fan the flames
Of the wars that are fought in places
Where we can't even say the names

They sell us the President the same way
They sell us our clothes and our cars
They sell us every thing from youth to religion
The same time they sell us our wars
I want to know who the men in the shadows are
I want to hear somebody asking them why
They can be counted on to tell us who our enemies are
But they're never the ones to fight or to die
And there are lives in the balance
There are people under fire
There are children at the cannons
And there is blood on the wire

More on black presidents on film and TV

A few posts ago I presented my theory about how Dennis Haysbert's portrayal of President Palmer in "24" has served to generate acceptance of the idea of a black president in a wide, diverse viewing base.

Others apparently have been thinking similar thoughts. Here is a very interesting article about the subject. I particularly enjoy John Stewart's quip that he made as host of the Oscars this year. All due respect to the great Morgan Freeman as president in "Deep Impact" (1998), but Stewart's point is well-taken. This is why the Haysbert performance was special -- it literally transcended race. Viewers simply said to themselves "shit, this guy is one kick-ass prez!"