everythingwrongagain*

What the Internet Is Good For

2006-09-13T14:44:00.000-07:00

Settling a debate over 9/11 photos. Now if everyone else in the picture would come forward, we'd have a story.

Heat

2006-09-08T04:26:00.000-07:00

When I came back to Palm Springs after two weeks in the East Bay helping the family pack decades into cardboard boxes, I immediately began to sort my own possessions into heaps. Most of them should be thrown out or given away as gifts.

I thought as much leafing through the lastest issue of GQ that arrived in the mail. A friend bought me a subscription. I value it for the journalism and entertaining features, and resent the fashion advice even as I read it.

I have in recent months made more use of the hottub outside. Often, late at night, alone, I go there to think or just relax. Most nights this summer in the desert, even the hottub is a relief from the heat.

It is thought that the heat killed Terry. I think he was in his 50s, early 60s. He managed a golf course, or maybe he was a retired cop. Details blur at the bar. He first suspected I was that guy, you know, that son of the guy who ran the club back in the day. A lot of people in this town ask me if I'm that guy, so often that I'm conditioned to spit out "That son of the guy who used to run the club back in the day? Nope, not me," as soon as they see me and the look flashes across their face and they say "Hey -- "

I'm not that guy, and it's good, because some people tell me he knew certain people, and other people tell me he's long since gone, and other people tell me he went -- or was taken out -- to a spot in the desert and never came back.

No, I'm not that guy, I told Terry, but he still gave me shit every time he saw me, and I eventually started giving him shit. Starting introducing him as my nephew. And the other night, I learned he was dead. Someone had propped an envelope up against a bottle of beer on the bartop: In memory of Terry. They say he went out for a walk in the desert heat, and when they found him, it was in his apartment with the fan on.

And I had just shaken hands with him the other night.

Death is like that. Death is an unfinished sentence.

So I was, in defiance of grammar, a little bit gladder tonight in the hot tub, alone, looking up at the moon behind the silhouettes of the palm trees as the desert slept. I may not have made the most I might have had out of life so far, but tonight wasn't the time to bitch about it. At least I was out of the heat, and the moon was beautiful, and I was, in all likelihood, going to wake up in the morning and have the luxury of bitching about not being able to afford this or that.

Still, I plan on drinking several glasses of water tonight. Can't be too careful, with the heat.

Force Choke on Aisle Six

2006-07-19T06:29:00.000-07:00

Look, Up in the Sky! It's Spoilerman!

2006-06-30T16:15:00.000-07:00

I wish that Western Civ would find a new story to tell. Seeing Jesus everywhere -- the Matrix, Coruscant, Metropolis, a tortilla -- is getting predictable.

When the new Superman flick isn't evoking our Savior, arms outstretched, it's reminding me of 9/11. The criticism is immediate: Silly American, why must you view everything through the lens of Sept. 11? It's hard; I can't think of any other day I've seen bodies plummeting to earth from such great heights.

The recycling of John Williams theme from earlier Superman movies and the cannibal dog joke earn this movie a C+. Demerits stick in the mind:

Parker Posey completely miscast as Lex Luthor's ditzy moll. Would have been a wonderful, edgy Lois Lane. Instead, earns acting points for playing dumb. She probably had more fun. Bad for the flick, though.

Casting of Tucker Carlson in Jimmy Olsen role disasterous.

James Marsden, now typecast as the cuckolded schmuck in not one but two comic book universes. Would the Man of Steel and Wolverine fight to bed Marsden's woman in a crossover?

First half of the movie with Superman as a stalker: Creepy. Equally disquieting, the suggestion that Superman's love life drives him to take out his frustration on the world's criminal element.

Lois Lane a non-presence. Much better in that surfer girl movie.

The framing of the shots in parts is better than the scene. Not desireable. I don't want to go to a superhero flick and leave saying, "Wow, that shot of the spiral staircase from above panning into Luthor's lair really impressed me." Great scenes, not shots.

Superman in the ER, large crowds outside hospital. I know, I'm at a movie about a flying guy in blue tights and a red cape, and I'm complaining about plausibility? But please. What scalpel do they have that's going to dent the epidermis of steel? What hospital is going to allow sign-holding throngs to clog its entrance? Does Metropolis have a two-tier health care system for the sole benefit of the Son of Krypton? Bruce Wayne wouldn't put up with that shit.

Short "Nacho Libre" Review

2006-06-19T04:18:00.000-07:00

Not so much "offbeat" as "off key."

Oh, Wonderful

2006-06-06T02:32:00.000-07:00

CHICAGO — One in 20 Americans may be susceptible to uncontrollable anger attacks in which they lash out in road rage, spousal abuse or other severe transgressions that are totally unjustified, researchers from Harvard and the University of Chicago have found. Full story.

The Town That Banned the Devil

2006-06-06T02:13:00.000-07:00

In honor of today's date and all the silly fussing over it, let's flash back to a special town in, naturally, Florida:

Would banning the Prince of Darkness from the town's three square miles deliver Inglis from drugs, thieves and drunken drivers? Would it ease the fears of a small, isolated community -- frustrated by joblessness and uneasy about war overseas and terrorism at home -- and attract an angel of light?

[snip]

At the Mousetrap, a watering hole popular with bandana-wearing, tattooed bikers and truckers on weekdays and lipsticked, moussed, rock-band lovers on weekends, owner Walt Deal cuts a draft beer and laughs.

"Did people stop drinking? Heck no," he says. "If anything, business got better. I mean, for a while there, people were driving into town to see where the devil is, or was. Only thing it did was make us a laughingstock. I mean, I had relatives calling me from South Jersey saying, 'What the hell kind of a town are you living in?' "

Steve Morris, a captain on the five-man Inglis force, might take issue with Deal's analysis. Morris' main nemesis is crystal meth. The drug isn't hard to make, and it's sold cheaply on the street. Since the proclamation, Morris says, drug-dealing and burglary are way down and busts way up.

Exactly how much?

He pauses, his regard clouding a bit. "Significantly." Morris glances upward. "And the Big Man upstairs is the reason."

Mary Jo Farnan and her husband, Bob, who own the Port Inglis Restaurant around the corner from the police station, aren't convinced. Their eatery has been broken into three times in less than a year. A few weeks ago, they fired a waitress because she and her boyfriend were getting high in the bathrooms on the evening shift.

"I see Satan all the time," Farnan, 69, says. "His name is crack, pot, coke and meth, and he roams around Inglis like he always has. Steve Morris? Shoot, he doesn't even live in this town. After 5 o'clock, he gets in his car and drives home to Homosassa, a half- hour away."

[snip]

A year ago, Floyd Craig, a Korean War vet who owns a farm produce market, ran for mayor against [Carolyn] Risher, the incumbent by default for 12 years. Nobody had run against her before.

Craig got whipped. The devil, he says, didn't.

"Our drunks still drink, our hookers still hook, and truckers still ride like the devil up and down the highway," he says. "People are going to sin, plain and simple. No proclamation is gonna stop that."

He bags some lettuce for a customer. "I got nothing against the mayor. She was trying to do right by the community she loves. But if you start thinking that the devil is outside of you, foreign somehow, you stop taking a good, hard look at the evil inside yourself, in your own deeds."

Full story, and a still good one.

Seen on a Church Billboard in Palm Springs

2006-05-29T03:11:00.000-07:00

SMILE! WE KNOW OF HOTTER PLACES.

Memorial Day

2006-05-28T15:21:00.000-07:00

In a similar vein: Families seek accidental war deaths medal:Following his son's death in February 2005, Perez joined a small but growing group of families who are petitioning Congress to create an alternative medal honoring those killed in a war zone but away from combat. In Iraq and
Afghanistan, that amounts to more than 600 men and women — more than 20 percent of the deaths so far.

Leading the effort is Eleanor Dachtler, who lost her 19-year-old son during an insurgent attack in Iraq and received her son's Purple Heart posthumously. Currently, the families of those who die non-combat deaths say they receive medals honoring their loved one's service, but nothing recognizing their death.
Full story.

Snap!

2006-05-28T15:14:00.000-07:00

From Ebert:

Q. I'm always amazed at the irrational nature of the debate on medical care. In your review of "The Death of Mr. Lazarescu," you state, "At least in Romania he is not asked for his insurance company, and he has a theoretical right to free medical care." In the next sentence you quote a Romanian doctor who discusses the horrible condition of medical care in his country. Isn't it obvious that when something is "free" for everyone, it will be inadequate for everyone? Do people get left behind in a medical system that involves free enterprise? Of course they do. But when you have a system where personal responsibility plays no part, you certainly get the system you deserve. I for one am glad that I get asked for proof of insurance when I show up at a hospital. It annoys me that people who cannot do so get treated at my expense anyway.

Jeff Grant, Centreville, Va.

A. The hospitals are always looking for volunteers. Maybe you could help them turn away sick poor people.

Just Another Night at the Office

2006-05-27T23:10:00.000-07:00

Me, Renee and Will receive word of Angelina Jolie's C-section. Thanks to Wade for the photo.

Andrew Martinez, R.I.P.

2006-05-20T14:21:00.000-07:00

As a friend says, "Close another chapter of our adolescence."

SAN JOSE, California (AP) -- The former college student known as the "Naked Guy," who gained notoriety in the early 1990s for attending class in the buff, has died in jail, authorities said.

Full story.

Impeachy Keen

2006-05-18T14:33:00.000-07:00

From the old alma mater:

Over 100 students gathered in Storke Plaza yesterday to protest President George W. Bush’s warrantless wiretapping policies during “Impeachfest,” which featured presidential impersonations and the throwing of peaches at the national leader’s effigy.

Full story.

Florida, Land Accursed by God

2006-05-16T22:25:00.000-07:00

Survey says: Miami Tops Auto Club List for Rude Drivers.

Re: Director of Central Intelligence, Hayden Nomination

2006-05-13T23:45:00.000-07:00

Why the furrowed brows? I'm sure that military men are every bit as talented, if not more so, as their civilian counterparts at assassinating democratically elected leaders, planning abortive invasions of Cuba, rigging elections, trading arms for hostages, running drugs, conducting mind-control experiments, arming our enemies in time for the next war, and staging the occasional coup.

So, really now, what are we afraid the CIA is going to become?

Appreciating the Thought

2006-05-10T23:53:00.000-07:00

For the first time in U.S. history, the cost of manufacturing both a penny and a nickel is more than the 1-cent and 5-cent values of the coins themselves. Full story.

Colin Quinn Joke Funny, Six Years Later

2006-05-08T12:37:00.000-07:00

Watching the "More Cowbell" episode of Saturday Night Live on E! and Weekend Update flashes a graphic "Rising Gas Prices" behind Colin Quinn as he brays that gas prices have reached a new high ... of $1.52 a gallon.

Get Your Mind Into the Gutter

2006-05-01T06:56:00.000-07:00

Here's a story about sewers.

Canadians, Lovely People

2006-04-30T22:34:00.000-07:00

Many of them in town for the Coachella Festival. And you can listen to Neil Young's new album online for free.

998 Days Left

2006-04-27T16:13:00.000-07:00

"Let's Impeach the President"
Neil Young

Let’s impeach the president for lying
And leading our country into war
Abusing all the power that we gave him
And shipping all our money out the door

He’s the man who hired all the criminals
The White House shadows who hide behind closed doors
And bend the facts to fit with their new stories
Of why we have to send our men to war

Let’s impeach the president for spying
On citizens inside their own homes
Breaking every law in the country
By tapping our computers and telephones

What if Al Qaeda blew up the levees
Would New Orleans have been safer that way
Sheltered by our government’s protection
Or was someone just not home that day?

Let’s impeach the president
For hijacking our religion and using it to get elected
Dividing our country into colors
And still leaving black people neglected

Thank god he’s cracking down on steroids
Since he sold his old baseball team
There’s lot of people looking at big trouble
But of course the president is clean

Thank God

Hey, Asshole, Take a Closer Walk With Me

2006-04-25T13:00:00.000-07:00

Continuing the "Upon the king!" theme this week, here's a song by Pink (with the Indigo Girls) called "Dear Mr. President." Imagine if "Masters of War" came out of, well, Pink. While Dylan ends fantasizing about seeing the bastards lowered into their graves, Pink invites George to, uh, take a walk:

How do you sleep at night
How do you walk with your head held high
Dear Mr. President
You'd never take a walk with me
Would you

Would you, after that? Granted, that's how the song ends. I left out all the good stuff about the whiskey and cocaine, the bombs and the childhood psychoanalysis.

Haven't We Seen This Movie Before?

2006-04-25T06:06:00.000-07:00

And, of course, it's from Florida (ahem) ... LAND ACCURSED BY GOD:

PENSACOLA, Fla. -- In their quest to create the super warrior of the future, some military researchers aren't focusing on organs like muscles or hearts. They're looking at tongues.

By routing signals from helmet-mounted cameras, sonar and other equipment through the tongue to the brain, they hope to give elite soldiers superhuman senses similar to owls, snakes and fish.

The device, known as "Brain Port," was pioneered more than 30 years ago by Dr. Paul Bach-y-Rita, a University of Wisconsin neuroscientist. Bach-y-Rita began routing images from a camera through electrodes taped to people's backs and later discovered the tongue was a superior transmitter.

Full story.

Bush Come and Gone

2006-04-24T07:44:00.001-07:00

The president was due to leave Palm Springs this morning after three days in the Coachella Valley. Watching him arrive from a balcony across the street from the airport was strange. Air Force One is quieter than I expected.

The cops blocked off the street below for the motorcade. A few pedestrians were encouraged to go elsewhere. Just as the motorcade started rolling off the tarmac, a young woman and child started to run across the street toward the motorcycle cop that was waving them away. He then waved them away from the sidewalk, up onto ... a grassy knoll. We all laughed.

The motorcade rolled out and hauled ass down the street toward the freeway.

It's strange, to repeat myself. I spent a few years loathing Bush from afar, and gave up after the country failed to give him the boot in the last election. And now, after he's hit new lows in the polls, after Katrina and another mess of months in Iraq, and especially on that day, when I was closer to him than I might ever be again, what I felt wasn't contempt.

It was pity. We go back to Shakespeare. "The king is but a man, as I am." There went the dolt who used to be the most powerful man on Earth. What must it be like to live that life? When the president is taking a shit, is he thinking about how much money he hopes to suck out of the donors with a ten minute talk at the next night's rubber chicken affair? Conversely, when he's reading off the teleprompter and the suckers are cheering the applause lines, is he off biking somewhere in the trails of his mind? Does someone in that job, total bastard or not, ever have anything resembling a private life? Any life?

About the closest I ever came to what I imagine it must be like -- and it's still galaxies away from what George must be living -- was back in college, editing the newspaper with an alleged readership of 20,000. One year of playing the editor role and I was mentally toast for five years. You start playing the role, you forget your own gestures.

Barring impeachment, George will have played the role of President Bush for eight years.

How far stranger and stronger a cage that man must live in. A great big rolling hamster ball of office. When he's alone at dinner with Laura, does he use the same gestures when he's desperately trying to hammer home a point? What is it like to step off a plane and be greeted, not even by cheers or cheers, but by the snapping hiss of a thousand speed-shutter clicks as photographers capture your every move, your every squint, wincing toward manly resolve, your aw-shucks half-stumble as you walk down the stairs. Your blue tie sticking out under your coat. Most powerful man in the world, can't even get his coat to cover his tie.

Is it duty that keeps him going? Responsibility? The voice of God whispering in his ear? The old Roman whisper was different, we're told.

"Remember, thou art mortal."

What American whispers echo between our president's ears?

George W. Bush will be stuck playing George W. Bush for the rest of his life. I pity him. He has not shown the wonderful bullshit talent Clinton has for reinvention or merely moving on to new and unexplored realms of horsepuckey. George will be intoning the same crap he's been laying on thick for two terms when he's 70, 80, doomed as Nixon was to forever argue on his own behalf in a court of public opinion whose jury has long since gone home, or fallen asleep, or forgotten.

Was it all a dream? Who is this man? I've talked to two photographers who shot him and they both say it was surreal. I'm told security was shoddier than it was in the Clinton years -- even the sniffing dogs were tired of guarding the man.

I don't know. It already seems like a lifetime of having to listen to The Bad Stepfather on the nightly news. I wonder what it will be like, one thousand or so days from now, in a country without the presidency of George W. Bush swinging from its neck like a dead albatross.

The President

2006-04-22T17:18:00.000-07:00

Just landed in Palm Springs. Watched it from the balcony, Air Force One framed between the palms. Cops blocked off the street. Many vans, SUVs, a few limos.

And then he was gone.

VH1 Running Out of Decades

2006-04-20T15:22:00.000-07:00

"I Love the 30s" on my television screen. Shirley Temple Black snarking on poor, defenseless Groucho's grease mustache.

Bottom of barrel, scraping.

Yes, Indeedy

2006-04-20T07:54:00.000-07:00

"Both a Warden and a Prisoner"

2006-04-20T04:12:00.000-07:00

Fascinating story about a woman who remembers ... everything. Almost.

There are limits to AJ's memory. While she has nearly perfect recall of what she was doing on any given date and instantly can identify the date and day of the week when an important historical event in her lifetime occurred, she has difficulty with rote memorization and did not always do well in school. She scored perfectly on a formal neuropsychological test to measure her autobiographical memory, but during the testing had difficulty organizing and categorizing information. She refers to her ongoing remembering of her life's experiences as "a movie in her mind that never stops".

Read or listen.

Adios, Scott McClellan

2006-04-19T06:53:00.000-07:00

The president's press secretary has announced his resignation. He always reminded me of Al from "Tool Time" without the beard, and, unlike his predecessor Ari Fleischer, was incapable of lying gracefully. It's good that he's going. We'll be needing better liars shortly. Perhaps they can bring Fleischer back in time for Tehran.

Ari Fleischer kept this country in Kansas for years. The Fleischer lie would direct your eye toward Emerald City's beautiful horizons even as the great, fire-belching face clattered to pieces, revealing the ropes and pulleys and the little man behind it all. McClellan just told you, out from under the flop sweat, that oh, no, your eyes weren't working and your ears were broke, and pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. If I could give hime a one-word headline, it'd be "Pfft."

Iran

2006-04-19T02:13:00.000-07:00

So I was talking to this Special Forces guy on leave.

"Oh, yeah, we're going in. We're going to take 'em out, with Israel."

Iran? Large country, Iran.

"We're going in six months, you watch. C-I-A, man. Christians in Action. Six months."

That was three months ago.

Neat Trick

2006-04-18T05:44:00.000-07:00

I met a bounty hunter last week, a fellow Gaucho. who told me the following story:

The bounty hunter was on the trail of a bail jumper who had given the agency one line after another that didn't check out. The bounty hunter gets down to the bottom of the list -- a home phone number -- and goes to the local supermarket.

The bounty hunter picks up a pack of chewing gum, tells the cashier, oh yeah, I forgot my supermarket club card at home, can I give you my phone number? Zip-zap, the address prints up on the receipt, and it checks out. Another bail jumper in bracelets.

Neat.

Today's Kitchen Tip ... and Recipe!

2006-04-17T04:42:00.000-07:00

Tip: A plastic cutting board can easily transform into a bowl if you don't load it properly in the dishwasher and it falls through the rack onto the heating element. Now I'm going to have to take up jai alai.

Recipe: Marc's Cutting Board Catfish

1 catfish fillet
3 small tomatoes
1/2 onion
olive oil
crushed red pepper flakes
3 packets of hot sauce from nearest "Mexican" eatery

Spill olive oil into frying pan. Insert fish. Begin frying over medium heat.

Dice tomatoes and onion on a cutting board that isn't shaped like a bowl. Toss results in pan. Continue frying, flipping with spatula.

Sprinkle crushed red pepper flakes generously. Try to get most of them in the pan.

Add hot sauce to the fish as you fry it. Stop frying when the onions become translucent and before the fish dissolves.

Transfer result from pan to plate. Eat. Handwash cutting board.

Friday Night at the Movies

2006-04-17T04:22:00.000-07:00

Nothing but teenagers at the 9:10 showing of "Scary Movie 4." Before the show, the usher walked halfway down the stadium steps and begged the crowd to turn off all their cell phones.

The crowd laughed. Crazy kids. Good jokes at the expense of the dialog in "The Village," though.

Office Pranks

2006-04-17T04:02:00.000-07:00

Saturday night at the office I took the surplus Yellow Pages and walled off a coworker's cubicle.

Sunday I arrived to find my chair gone, replaced by a chair made out of Yellow Pages.

Snap!

Alpha and the Izzard

2006-04-16T06:47:00.000-07:00

From "Dress to Kill":

So, yeah. So the Pagan religion had very big festivals, remember, on Easter and Christmas. The Christian religion came along and had very big festivals, at Easter and Christmas. Jesus died on one and was born on the other. (doubting sounds) 'Cause Jesus I do think did exist, and he was, I think, a guy who had interesting ideas in the Gandhi-type area, in the Nelson Mandela-type area, you know, relaxed and groovy; and the Romans thought, "Relaxed and groovy?! No, no, no, no, no!" So they murdered him. And kids eat chocolate eggs, because of the color of the chocolate, and the color of the ... wood on the cross. Well, you tell me! It's got nothing to do with it, has it? You know, people going, "Remember, kids," the kids who're eating the chocolate eggs,

"Jesus died for your sins."

"Yeah, I know, it's great!"

"No, no no, it's bad, it's bad!"

"No, it's bad! It's very bad. It's terrible! Whatever you want, just keep giving me these eggs."

And the bunny rabbits! Where do they come into the crucifixion? There were no bunny rabbits up on the hill going, "Hey, what, are you going to put those crosses in our warrens? We live below this hill, all right?" Bunny rabbits are for shagging, eggs are for fertility. It's a festival -- it's the spring festival!

Transcript here, but you're better off seeing the DVD.

Easter Sunday

2006-04-16T06:38:00.000-07:00

Having a ball, listening to cable network news anchors trying to pronounce "sepulchre".

Small, Sick World

2006-04-16T06:33:00.000-07:00

Wait a minute -- why blame the world?

Sick, sick story about sick things done in Oklahoma, with a twist.

Periscope Up, and Surfacing

2006-04-15T22:28:00.000-07:00

"What a momentous occasion. Should it be sarcasm, irony, biting wit?"

You want to write this for me?

"Going like a pilgrim to a dusty temple, day after day, to be cheated. ..."

You're being encouraging.

I went damned near bankrupt last night. That was entertaining. This morning my sunglasses fell apart just when they'd hammered the car back together.

I am, like my first blog, broke but rich in family and wiseass friends.

And back.