'The Girl with Kaleidoscope Eyes! ... Sarah in the Sky Wolf Hunting!'

The Guru did some more channeling of the Neocon Nico of the North Wednesday, this time putting the beat into her bewildering tweets.

"From sealife near lush wet rainforests to energy housed under frozen tundra atop permafrost,God most creatively displays His diversity in AK."

Yeah - you say it!

"Great day w/bear management wildlife biologists; much to see in wild territory incl amazing creatures w/mama bears' gutteral raw instinct ..."

Hey, cats! Dig T.J. Kirk's rhythms, jazzing up our Queen Half Baked Alaska's techno-patter, jazzercising through a landscape of stupefyingly incoherent non sequiturs.

Snap. Snap. Snap. Ddddrummm. Yeah!

An overwhelming compulsion drove me back through time to groove on Shatner's greatest hits and those of his Vulcan Hipster friend, Lenny Nimoy. Nimoy was Burroughs to Shatner's Ginsberg. Or maybe Kerouac to his Cassidy.

But they dominated a medium wholly apart from the fringes of the literary world: they were musical giants of a type we'll likely never see again.

'Spaced Out' is in many ways the greatest album ever made.

Simon and Garfunkel, Lennon and McCartney, Jagger and Richards, Strummer and Jones, Iggy and Bowie, Leiber and Stoller, Rogers and Hammerstein, Edina and Patsy, The Captain and Tennille, Regis and Kathy Lee, Milli and Vanilli. All unquestionably great musical partnerships, but Nimoy and Shatner tower above them and stand alone.

'Mr Tambourine Man? Mister .. Mister ... Mister Tambourine Man?' Indeed, Bill. Keep looking, you'll find him. And Lenny, what about you? What's that you say? If you had a hammer, you'd hammer every morning, you'd hammer every evening? It's hammer time, Leonard. Live long and prosper.

The Chef, Doktor Murray, Bubbles and the Viking rappin' offspring: it's Bhatti-time!

Boy, the Moonwalker's ghost has got some legs. The dead just won't die. A natural metamorphosis from black to white to translucent to spirit. And now a Norwegian Rapper (!?!) might be Michael's son?

'Gunnhild Jean is not my lover ...' or maybe, 'Isn't it Good? Norwegian Wood ...'

We've got his Doctor Feel Good Conrad Murray and one of Dr Murray's accusers, MJ former private Chef Douglas Jones, continuing to make 'news' while Omer Bhatti (not very Scandinavian sounding) is in the odd position of claiming that he's not Jackson's kid. Neither Hammer nor Chuck D. nor the members of 'A-Ha' were available for comment.

Who claims MJ paternity to this MC Viking then? Jackson's wacko daddy-o, Joe (played with absolute dead-on brilliance by Welcome-back-Kotter's Freddie 'Boom-Boom' Washington in the 1992 tele-bio). Joe probably wants to pawn off MJ's massive debt onto some unsuspecting 'heir'.

'Gunnhild Jean is not my lover ... Dad says I am the one .. the kid (says he) is not my son - eyoo, yoo, yoo.'

Chef Jones probably knows. According to MSNBC, the only one that truly knows is Elizabeth Taylor (Big Mama Taylormade, as she was known to the Jackson inner circle).

Boy, they're really digging into MJ's apparent drug of choice, Diprivan. Sure, he gobbled up Xanax like it was going out of style. And shot up Demerol regularly. But he needed a bit more to "mellow out". He practiced what is known in the with-it crowd as 'going on an anesthesiologist's holiday'.

Ya know, I used to think when Michael wore that surgical mask out in public that he was just being creepy. Now, though, I think he was just being 'sly'. Kind of letting other cool cats who were in the know that he was 'tuned in' (or in his lingo, 'pre-op').

It's very much a burgeoning movement, like the rise of psychedelics in mid 60s just when guys like Lennon and Dylan first latched onto to what was then an 'underground' movement and helped to spread its message worldwide: tune in, turn on and drop out. They took to wearing tinted sunglasses ('tea shades'), facial hair (which wasn't common outside of beatnik circles at that time) and wearing colorful, flowery clothes, flashing the peace sign. All this implied first weed and then acid and other hallucinogens.

Likewise, Michael's surgical mask says, 'Yeah, man - I'm on the operating table - how 'bout you?' Meaning 'I'm on a permanent anesthesiologist's holiday - are you hip? are you pre-op?' Or, bluntly, I shoot Dipravin. It's not 'tune-in, turn-on, and drop-out', it's 'pre-op, shoot up, knock out.' He was the Timothy Leary of General Anesthetics.

Of course, I could be reading too much into all this.

'When I said I was lying, I might have been lying - Never let me hear you say you're not trying' - E. Costello, 1980

I was 'taught' today the difference between fact and truth.

It is an element of the 'curse of knowledge' problem and it never hurts to be reminded of it (your omissions might be due to your perception of some shared understanding that in fact doesn't exist).

It's also a result of local optimization and misaligned organizational structures that result in 'facts' that may be 'true' for a small group but neither facts or truth to the organization at large.

Ironically, the 'teacher' in this case is perhaps simultaneously both the biggest source and victim of this problem. And he doesn't even know it, which is yet another irony.

Seek truth from facts. Yes, grasshopper.

Perhaps our teacher needs a seeing eye horse to help him navigate the truth. I hope he's not using utilization spreadsheets and allocation graphs and charts as his maps for they tend to be by far the biggest perpetrators of facts that lie - abandon all hope ye who enters that deep, dark labyrinth with just those tools.

Get to know those in the trenches and take an interest in what they do occasionally. Talk to them, communicate with them. At least once in a while. As Bobby Zimmerman once said: 'Using Ideas as my Maps.' Like a Rolling Pivot Report? There's something I can't put my finger on that just doesn't ring 'true' with that.

Perhaps Colbert's truthiness will have to suffice if you let it. Do yourself a favor and don't. Make an effort to get at the truth, even if it'll just be followed by instructions to adjust that truth until it "feels true." How does it feel?

And one last thing: beware those that fawn over teacher's 'new clothes'.

To much more important things. TV, of course. The only thing that matters in life, clearly.

Survivorman Less Stroud in the Kalahari Desert on Science Channel. Unfortunately he only did just shy of 20 of these shows and I've seen this one several times (spoiler: he survives).

Click.

In Bruges. A really good comedy with Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson. This one flew under the radar when it came out early last year cause I hadn't heard of it until a few months ago when it appeared on cable. It's very dark. Irish hit men cooling their heels in the medieval-style city of Bruges, Belgium. But I've seen it off-and-on quite a bit lately.

Click.

Ahh, Under Siege! A towering achievement! The master thespian, Steven Seagal, in perhaps his greatest triumph as a "Navy SEAL forced to finish his career as a cook" after punching an incompetent officer. He's joined on this merry romp with Erika Eleniak (miss July 1989 playing miss July 1989), Tommy Lee Jones (pre-Oscar/pre-Man in Black), Gary Busey (pre-rehab - well, pre-latest-rehab). Busey: "Where you going?" Jones: "Make Honolulu glow in the dark." Busey: "Outstanding!"

As James Lipton would exclaim, "Brilliant! What a national treasure!"

'Lord See that cat, Yeah I do mean you. See that cat. Yeah I do mean you. She got a TV eye on me.' - I. Pop, 1970

Television: Do I let the channel clicker rest on the second half of Chasing Amy (which I've seen a zillion times but is still very watchable) or catch an (apparently new) episode of NYC Prep.

Gotta go with the Manhattan debs over Holden, Banky and Alyssa.

Bad choice.

After five minutes and still no sign of sex or drugs (or anything else for that matter) I decided it was time to cut bait and flush this turd down the toilet/off my radar. Who'd have thunk rich, spoiled NYC teens and no vice? What's the world coming to?

Maybe the History Channel's 'Life After People'? The WASP Wet Dream (all the people of the Earth disappear but the animals and all man-made structures/everything else is fine). This is an actual series that each week takes a look at how different aspects of mankind's handiwork slowly (or quickly) erodes over time and/or neglect. As exciting as that sounds, it's a dull scene.

The Science Channel has a 'Humanology' marathon. First up: Electric Human. It's about how some guy is unaffected by being exposed to high voltage electricity. How can he absorb all this current? Who cares? Burn that motherfucker down, goes the song. He'll eventually go the way of Frank Grimes. And the show is a snooze. My favorite Science Channel show (which admittedly isn't limited to the Science Channel but rather makes its way around basic cable) is Survivorman. Less Stroud is the outdoor survivalist answer to MacGyver. If MacGyver was Canadian. But strangely, tonight is one of the few that Les isn't to be found on the dial.

So I incessantly scan for something to take my mind off of the insanity of work that threatens to reach up out of my Blackberry. I am often surprised that certain folks manage to figure out how to put their clothes on and drive to work each day. They must stop at each and every button of their shirt, calling and asking what they should do next. 'See that fourth button, the one right below the third button I just had you do? Well, do the same thing with that one. What? Yes, I know the third hole is already filled with the third button - put it in the fourth hole, directly across from it.'

Hey, one of Discovery's Hot 100 Infomercials is on - rocking up the charts.
High Definition Shades. 'Everything just ... Pops!' 'I got Thumbs Up from the Wife so I'll take them!' 'I can see the Blue of the Ocean!' 'Only 19.95? You kiddin' me!? And they're HD?' This is the 21st Century equivalent to Blue Blockers (an infomercial golden oldie).

Anyway, I think the paint is dry now - maybe I can catch what looks to be an exciting CNBC special on NASCAR weathering the down economy (and looks like I missed CNBC's take on the Porn Industry but I'm sure that'll repeat).

Or I can keep it on the TV Land Cosby Show Retrospective.

Or watch some of the Phillies.

Or the breaking news on Michael Jackson's toxicology report - flash! breaking news! And the news? That the toxicology report won't be released until next week! When can we kill the Jackson death? Or at least kill all the rest of the characters in this badly written play? Hey, Heir Doktor Sanjay Gupta is all scrubbed up and in the OR to show how a pre-op patient is put under with MJ's Drug of Choice, Diprivan and requires a machine to breath because the stuff zaps you so hard. The Chief of Anesthesiology tells the good Dr. Gupta that he 'hasn't heard of this being used in a home for legit reasons.' Really?!? Sounds like a fine, mellow high.

Speaking of the dead, here's my ol pal BILLY MAYS! So loud hawking 'Fix It' ('Now this scratch has met it's match!!!') that he can hear himself in ... well, whatever purgatory Infomercial ghosts are condemned to).

Maybe I should just shove my hand into the blender and hit the Frappe, wrap the stump with gauze and go to bed. Maybe after the Daily Show.

Pay Now or Palin

The man that truly defined both Mr. Tambourine Man and Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds in the sixties (Dylan/Byrds, who? Lennon, what?), Mr. T.J. Kirk himself Bill Shatner, raised the bar with a beatnik style reading of Sarah Palin's recent Farewell Speech. Palin was obviously channeling Allen Ginsberg's the Howl for her inspiration and Shatner does her proud. The girl with kaleidoscope eyes, indeed.

I can't wait to see what she's up to next! In an entertaining but not a good way!

Seriously, if we let her within 500 yards of either the White House or Capital Hill (and I mean even on a public tour), we will have really jumped the national shark and it'll be time to go live life under a more reasonable leader ... Like Lil' Kim Jong-Il (with my luck, they'll band together: Jong-Il - Palin 2012 bumper stickers are surely being printed as I write this). Or maybe Ted Nugent. Nugent-Palin, bringing Wolf hunting back to the mainstream where it belongs.

Fear and Loathing on the Autopsy Table - The other Dr. Gonzo, her Forensic Follies and Liberation from the Pain of run-of-the-mill Catheters

For every time you "cath" - Liberator. I guess folks that need to pee through a tube constitute at least part of the target demographic for Dr. G. Medical Examiner, though thankfully that's not me just yet.

A Dr. G Sunday afternoon marathon hits the spot after three hours of scrambling around on the tennis court in high humidity with a group of people many years my junior and I'm guessing many gym visits up on me.

Oddly, though, I feel a lot better now than I remember feeling after much shorter Sunday tennis excursions in the late 1980s.

How could that be?

It might have something to do with my lifestyle back then: Wednesday and Thursday evening, most of Friday afternoon and evening, and all of Saturday being generally spent in an alcoholic haze.

I recall thinking back then that with a bit of normal exercise on a Sunday, I'd trick my body into forgetting the pummeling I'd given it the rest of the week. My body wasn't fooled, but that never stopped me from trying. What's that definition of insanity? Trying the same thing over and over and expecting a different result? Something like that.

Anyway, back to the Morgue!

Man, Good ol' Doc G. is SO enthusiastic about finding some sort of hidden, ruptured vein deep within a supposedly healthy brain or an unknown spray of tumors in the colon of an apparent accident victim. Yek! Fun stuff! I don't see with all that digging around in cadavers that she has any time to investigate crime. I don't remember Jack Klugman doing much poking around on the autopsy slab - he was more apt to be poking around in the holes of your alibi, because every case was criminal in his world.

Hey, there's Vince with his ShamWow! Guess the Dr. G target demo needs a ShamWow or two: changing catheters can be a messy business, I'd imagine. Though Vince doesn't mention "caths" specifically, you can tell he'd readily agree that the ShamWow could handle that situation for you with class and dignity.

Followed by a Cadillac commercial? That seems out of place. Unless it comes with an available in-seat cath tube. That'd be sweet.

Activia - now we're back on track with the shut-in/piss-on-yourself target audience and in fact are entering the wing of this exclusive club that I hang out in. My kingdom for a bowel movement! Thanks, Jamie Lee! You've come a long way from Trading Places and Perfect!

Meanwhile, back out of the Yogurt and into the "standard Y incision" (love the animated graphics). Dr. G is narrowing down the root cause of the corpse in her charge.

Excited delirium resulting from ... Maybe drugs? Oh, oh. She's got those monster rib separators and is digging into the chest cavity. Nothing there. No anatomical smoking gun as to the ultimate cause of death - no trauma. It could be an overdose or cardiac arrhythmia. I'm on the edge of my seat! Oh, darn, more commercials - the toxicology results await!

Another Liberator commercial! Man, I must be keeping company with a lot of defective urinary tracts! Almost makes you wish yours was fucked up too, just so you could enjoy Liberator's fantastic product! I haven't yet seen a 'Depends' commercial here but it's just a matter of time (which reminds me of the one bright spot in an otherwise all-too-typically-unfunny SNL repeat last night: Chewable Pampers).

[Postscript - 6pm, several hours deep into the Dr. G Marathon - I feel I'm ready for the pathologist board exam and whattayaknow: A 'mega-depends' commercial for home delivery of all your incontinent supplies with HDIS. It shows an embarrassed elderly lady wheeling up to the checkout counter, her shopping cart stuffed full of nothing but bladder control products. I'm surprised they didn't pan down to a trail of shit and piss tracking her path through the store, followed by a quick shot of the disgusted patrons, finally landing on a close up of our red-faced protagonist. This could be you! Why chance going out into public! Let us ship this shit to your door! Discovery Health Ad execs didn't let me down.]

Back to Dr. G.

The results are in! Dr. G. says, 'The tox screen will speak to me'. And the tox-screen says ... Cocaine, not O.D. level. The process of elimination answers: 'Cardiac Arrhythmia!' Wow.

Oh, and the Phillies seems to be beating the shit out of the ball again today. Feast or famine with that crew.

If ya wanna know 'bout the bishop and the actress ...you can read it in the Sunday Papers ...

Sunday morning. Hillary's sending Lil' Kim to bed without supper, wheels of fire end on the Champs-Elysees, and I'm catching up with Nati Shalom (check out his post on leadership versus management, adding Tribes to my reading list).

Speaking of Scarlett Johansson - and if we weren't, why not? Also, speaking of Neve Campbell and Mary Louise Parker ... Anyway, concerning Ms. Johansson, I see she's teaming with Robert Downey, Jr. (he of many second acts in life and one of my favorite actors) in Iron Man 2. I wasn't necessarily a fan of the first (not because it wasn't mildly entertaining - it was - just that special effects laden movies aren't my cup of tea) but I'll be queuing up for the sequel for sure. Go ScarJo as Black Widow. Now I just need to arrange to get my holy trinity of babaliciousnous into a movie together: ScarJo, NevBell, and MarLoPar. Calling Harvey Weinstein ...

Anyway, I'm heading to the tennis courts for the first time in the 21st century in a few minutes. It's just like riding a bike, right Lance? The form of yore will kick in with the sense memory. Just have to dig the ol' wooden racket out of the closet, grab some extra fishing line in case I snap a string, climb into the Chuck Talyors and tighty whities and I'm prepped for combat. More to follow, I'm sure ...

The least interesting man in the world

I must be the antithesis of the Dos Equis 'most interesting man in the world'. Why else would yours truly be typing into the blogosphere void and watching a repeat of Cops on a lovely summer evening?

The neighborhood is empty - folks must be down at the beach. I hate to use the colloquialism 'down the shore.' If it involves sand, it's a beach. And if they are there, then it would follow that they are @ the beach - they're not down the beach, unless they are down the beach from (south of) you, implying that you are up the beach from (north of) them. All clear?

Having fun yet? Ready to watch paint dry with me?

I should close this post with my take on the Dos Equis 'most interesting man' catchphrase: "I don't drink beer but when I did, I preferred whatever was in front of me. Stay thirsty, my friends."

Speaking of which, you really have to visit this great booze movie web site.

My vote for the very best of soused cinema goes to Billy Wilder's The Lost Weekend, following the trials and tribulations of Mr. Don Birnam, played with cheese by Ray Milland (many years before reaching the summit of his craft as Rosey Grier's right head man). The score is tops, as are the Bellevue/DT/Rats-on-the-walls special effects. And Gloria, with her loathsome abbreviations. Just leave me my vicious circles, Nat.

Close second is Mickey Rourke's triple hamtastic ('on rye') spin as Charles Bukowsi's alter-ego Henry Chinaski in Barfly. 'Empty bottle. Broken Glass. Euphoria!' Lilly: 'Anyone can be a drunk.' Henry: 'Anyone can be a non-drunk. It takes a special talent to be a drunk. It takes endurance.'

Coming in to show at third is Leaving Las Vegas ('Have you been drinking all day?' 'But of course!'). Ben Sanderson, Sera, and Gooey Blender Drinks. Terri: 'Maybe you shouldn't drink so much.' Ben: 'Maybe I shouldn't breathe so much, Terri - Ha Ha!'

The Office of Ruminant Procurement (I'm trying - real hard Ringo - to be the Shepherd)

'When the governed act like sheep, they beget a government of wolves' - Edward R. Murrow. This quote kicks off the recent book, "The Emperor's New Clothes" by Richard Ben-Veniste (interesting read that is part biography/part dictum on Government Hubris).

And the wolves are only being instinctive when they perpetuate such a ruminant-centric environment, rewarding the 'well behaved' and demeaning those that question authority. Promotion and attrition follow their 'natural' course and before you know it taking a census cures your insomnia (employee surveys are their corollary in corporate nations).

Are your organizations blanketed in wool?

Is Shari Lewis meandering around your cube looking for her Lamb Chop? (Speaking of which, is it just me or did others also have an innate loathing of Shari Lewis and that filthy sock puppet mint-jelly receptacle of hers as a kid? And now her daughter is attempting to perpetrate that insipid creature on another generation of unsuspecting children. Jumpin' Jeziz, No!)

But I digress (again).

Sheep make great coats and diplomas but aren't known for their creativity, intelligence, humor or common sense (that's why it's horse sense, though God knows those filthy beasts are no smarter, except for maybe Mr. Ed and on the odd occasion, Silver).

Of course, participatory government is harder and actually requires, well - governing. It's easy to herd sheep but takes a bit more intelligence to effectively shepherd people.

But enough of this incoherent chatter and back to the herd ...

The return of Eeyore

What ever happened to my childhood hero, Eeyore? Why hasn't there been a Pixar Eeyore movie? It's a sure-fire summer blockbuster waiting to happen. Maybe a live-action take on the character.

Instead of a donkey, Eeyore could be an American Staffordshire Terrier, Winnie the Pooh wouldn't be a bear - he'd instead be a larger, more vicious and hungry canine. Christopher Robin would be played, of course, by noted thespian and animal loving scamp Michael Vick.

Eeyore loses his tail! Pooh finds it for him! Just like the stories Mom used to read me!

But with a modern twist ...

Pooh would follow up the 'de-tailing' by ripping out Eeyore's right eye and sinking his fangs into the vicinity of his jugular, giving him something truly worth complaining about for the first time. Christopher and his many friends would gather round one of his many 'Pits O' Fun' and exchange laughter and money with the other woodland creatures. Eeoyore is no match for Pooh and alas, it just wasn't his night (shades of Terry Malloy).

And when it was all said and done and the Poo had prevailed, Christopher then would gently apply the electrodes to ol' Eeyore's gonads and out go the lights!

What a magical tale for the children!

Teach the kids the value of lowered expectations while they're young. Welcome back to the NFL, already in progress ...

That's right, Mr. Martini. There is an Easter Bunny - Randle Patrick McMurphy

"Somebody once wrote 'Hell is the impossibility of reason'. That's what this place feels like. Hell. "
Oliver Stone's remembrance of his younger self in the person of Platoon's Pvt. Chris Taylor makes this observation in a letter to his Grandma. He's talking about combat in Vietnam during the height of the war but I think we've all come across an 'impossibility of reason' in less traumatic circumstances.

I sometimes think life in a large corporate technology department is largely based on a variant of this premise (not that hell is the impossibility of reason but rather here is the impossibility of reason). We occasionally happen upon an oasis of sanity and that keeps us going. Or maybe we just imagine taking brief gulps of air before the current pulls us under again - maybe that's when we are really the farthest around the bend. I often don't know what side of the dividing line I fall on any given day. Perhaps if I had a Homer Simpson style "Sane" Certificate, I'd be more confident of my lucidity. But to be sure of that means I must be just as positive in the madness of those around me (admittedly, not a stretch).

What were those wise words Grace and the Third President's Flying Machine sang way back when in the good old days? Go Ask Alice, I think she'll know. Indeed. Even when the Red Queen's lost her head.

At least it sounds like Dick Cheney's going to be gainfully employed again.

Yo Quiero - En Memoria De

Drop the Chalupa in silence as we honor the fallen. Those three words meant many things to many people, but when I hear them, I'll always think of Gidget the Taco Bell Chihuahua. She lived a long life, much like her contemporary, Walter Cronkite. Like Walter, Gidget became a trusted figure to middle America, convincing them all to wolf down huge quantities of the southwestern fast food colonoscopy preparation pinatas like they were going out of style. Toilet paper and Plunger manufacturers saw a late nineties boom. Run for the border, indeed - run for the restroom was more like it. The hairless mutt was ahead of her time - well before Jamie Lee decided to become the Activia lady.

But life is for the living and you gotta live it to the fullest while you're here. That's why my new hero is Daniel Suelo. This is a guy taking the bull by the horns and livin' da vida loca. Grasshoppers on the skillet by cave fire light. Drop the Chalupa, indeed.

Giant steps are what you take - Walking on the moon

I'm watching a "repeat" - the 40th anniversary re-broadcast of the moon mission on the History Channel. Nixon just got through talking to Neil and Buzz from the White house and his insincerity and general sliminess shines through as much today as it did in 1969.

From his disheveled appearance, Nixon must have rushed into the Oval Office just before placing the phone call - probably after doing a quick line with Kissinger in the blue room (I'm guessing, judging from the jittery speech pattern and dilated pupils).

He seems in especially high spirits chatting it up with the moonwalkers. Some might attribute the jovial mood to the occasion of our first walk on an alien world and beating the dirty commies to it but given the hour it's more likely that he had just finished his evening "constitutional" (which in his case usually meant a third world musical snuff film double feature with a shot of smack and a tub of buttered popcorn).

That always put him in a giddy frame of mind. Of course, that's just what I heard.

Tricky Dick is truly timeless, kind of like Jack the Ripper.

I was just shy of 7 years old when the moon walk was originally broadcast live but I don't remember it. I'm sure we were glued to the tube like everyone. I remember catching some of the later missions but not particularly that first one. Perhaps I knew even then that it was all staged on some backlot in Van Nuys.

Nothing Nixon was involved with, even indirectly, could possibly be genuine.

The moonshot was indeed real until he placed that congratulatory call and festered himself into what to that point had been a singular moment in history and after which became cheapened and suspect. In that Nixonian instant, the astronauts were teleported from the lunar surface to some sleazy sound stage in Porn Valley guarded by Liddy, Hunt, Colson and the rest of his plumbers and fixit boys. Phonying up the moon mission was merely a prelude to the CREEP activities to come. This was the minor leagues.

But maybe I'm being too hard on the guy. He did give me Watergate, after all, and I *do* remember watching and growing to love those hearings.

They interrupted the normal afterschool shows and I had no alternative options on the days when the weather made playing outdoors unpalatable (this was Seattle and it was pre-cable, children).

Those hearings instilled in me the political beliefs and principles that have stayed with me to this day. So I gotta say 'thanks' to Milhous for that. Were it not for him, I might have grown up to be a Republican.

Now, on to the weekly misadventures of Nancy Botwin (sweet Mary Louise) ... Alanis Morissette (who appeared memorably as God in Kevin Smith's Dogma) continues a guest run tonight as Nancy's baby doc. Weeds jumped the shark prior to first airing but I love it all the same.

Daly and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coats

Boy, the cheese is being applied thick and heavy on ABC's coverage of the British Open: agonizingly long passages of purple prose whispered over wide angled swatches of sea-swept Scottish coastline scenery [Scottish James Earl Jonesish golf whisperer]: "in the land where golf and groundskeepers were born, where kings and kilts and bagpipes and barf-bags share a noble heritage, where the sun and the warmth give way to wind and driving rain, howling like a highlander with his gonads crushed by a caber, we drift back through the sands of time ..." zzzzzzzz - , etc. ad nauseam.

And the endless interviews. And "let's get you caught up on what's happened earlier". No, how about we watch what's happening now. Occasionally, they also have showed some live golf, but that seems almost incidental.

It's all halfhearted anyway. I half expected them to bag it all and simply film Tiger traveling back to Florida instead. "Here we see Tiger at airport Security. He's elected to remove his keys and put them into the tray. He's walking through now. And he's in!"

At least John Daly is keeping the thing dignified with a traditional Scottish outfit that he must have designed himself one morning in the midst of what I imagine is his usual wake-up technicolor yawn into the toilet.

Speaking of colorful, drunken cheese, looks like someone wanted some of Wisconsin's finest on their dog. Problem was she was driving the dog and the yellow stuff must have been chilling in a locked garage icebox. No immediate signs alcohol was a factor but then again, no signs that it wasn't. They don't call it 'Milwaukee's Best' for nothing, after all.

Well, enough of this golf shit - time to head to the driving range and then out for a jog - fun in the sun ...

Get your damn hands off her, Biff

Unrelated Thoughts.

This is a pretty neat story, though it immediately brought to mind (well, to my mind) the bad Seth Green horror movie Idle Hands. Perhaps this guy can get a gig doing ads for State Farm Insurance. Good Hands indeed. Even when they're Hand-me-downs (boo, hiss).

Speaking of hand jobs, Glenn Beck proves that if there is a God, he is not without a pretty good sense of humor. Fox is still the go-to place for comedy that it was in its formative years in the late 80s, (Remember Married with Children before Steve Rhoades left and jumped over the shark on his way out the door?) Who would have guessed back then that it would be the News division carrying that torch now, however unintentionally? With Beck and O'Reilly leading the charge.

I'll be the first to admit that MSNBC is often just as bombastic, teetering as they are on the left wing of the plane as much as Fox is on the wrong wing, but at least they wear their bias with some intelligence at the DOS Peacock. Don't get me wrong: Keith Olbermann's blustering buffoonery and self-righteousness is occasionally overwhelming, even to a bleeding heart, commie pinko socialist radical like me.

I love Keith and Rachel but is having just one guest with a contrary opinion asking too much? A surprisingly effective Ben Affleck captured Keith's blustering self righteousness to a tee on a recent SNL.

Still, we're talking relative degrees of annoyance. Beck and O'Reilly take obnoxiousness to a new level. I have to take anti-nausea pills before flipping the channel past Fox news since even a brief glimpse of any of the regular jokesters there without proper medicine will induce me to projectile vomiting. But they are funny.

And that's where Beck and O'Reilly and his ilk live - as clowns, not fit for the news. On the day that we lost perhaps the most iconic and respected journalist in Walter Cronkite, the contrast is blinding. These cheapjack punks are in the same business as Walter?

I guess.

In the same way that Filet Mignon and a steaming pile of dog shit are both food to a starving animal.

Well, the little guy was kinda funny-lookin'

Typical ADD evening ...
I'm flipping incessantly between highlights of the British Open and Sotomayor Confirmation Hearings, along with Sling Blade on Showtime and Fargo on IFC. Meanwhile also answering emails, finishing up a presentation, and perusing the various blogs and feeds I follow. I think Billy Bob just threatened Lindsey Graham with a Kaiser Blade (some people call it a Sling Blade, I call it a Kaiser Blade). And was that John Daly feeding Al Franken to a wood chipper? Anything's possible with that guy but either Franken's playing hooky in Scotland or Daly's on a bender in DC. You betcha.

I see in the news that Starbucks is renaming one of its coffee shops in my hometown (Starbucks' hometown too). Naming it after its address and adding booze to the menu are two very different business decisions. I always thought Starbucks ignored a massive market in the bar and club crowd. Sure you help them to survive the next day (along with Visine - that they never bundled the two together is another lost opportunity), but why not help keep the party going with Tall Skim Bailey Lattes and Grande Mocha Absolut Frappuccinos right there in the gin joint? Changing the name from Starbucks to 15th Avenue Coffee and Tea sort of dilutes the brand, though. If you ask me. Which they apparently didn't.

In this midst of pondering all this, a piece of spam sneaks past my filters that is just "off" enough in the grammar of the come-on that I have to share:

From: Jennifer Kendrick
Subject: Your life sucks; use our 26% of all our products

Need a bursting passion the whole weekend and bring wonderful pleasure to her. Take half a pill under your tongue and get ready for action! Your couch will hear a lot more hot moans, if this blue pack will be in your pocket!

Well, Jennifer's got me pegged, for sure. Sign me up. Except that my couch is busted. The back broke off, its subtle way of telling me to put it out of its 11 year misery and buy a new one. Instead, in typical proactive (or pro-something) fashion, I moved over to the recliner.

Linger on, your palin blue eyes (apologies, Mr. Reed - Ed Wood, all is forgiven)

I figure we're in the early stages of the Empire Strikes Back if one were to apply 'Lucas'-onian ('Lucas'que?) principles to current American political reality. The election last year was the attack on the death star, the climax if you will of 'A new (Audacity of) Hope'. But we're a couple of years yet away from Obama losing his hand to Dick Cheney and finding out the uncomfortable truth about his lineage. (Kenya is not Wyoming? They have similar forms of democracy, I've heard.)

Rom Emanuel is Han Solo - David Axelrod, Yoda - Hillary, Leia
Joe Biden is Chewbacca (or maybe he's Jar Jar, arriving appropriately inappropriate into the wrong movie)

Or maybe I have it all wrong and Cheney is the emperor.

The appendage, perhaps then, is due to be lopped off by Darth Palin ("Barack, I am your Mother").

Perhaps, too, I also have wrong the particular appendage that is in peril.

It sort of fits, though.

Think about it. Okay, don't think so much - feel about it - the truthiness can't be denied.

They both apparently enjoy basketball (or, in the latter case, at least basketball analogies and how apparently all the great basketball players like to leave the game in the 4th quarter). She can see Russia from her house - he just saw Russia from his mobile home (Air Force One).

You'd think that her youth would rule such a thing out, but I always thought that she had a little 'Highlander' in her ('There can be only one - please God').

This would all imply that he got his literacy, poise, and sanity from his father's side of the family.

But the opening credits have barely trailed off the screen - we have a long way to go before we have to worry about Ewoks roaming the planet, Hip waders drying in the east room, book burnings and literature lynchings, and Michelle's garden giving way to a smelt pond. A while to enjoy things before Mrs. Maverick and her Alaskan Geese (apologies to Dr. Green) go to Washington while Jimmy Stewart does cartwheels in his casket.

And that's another movie for another time.

"I found America hiding in the corner of my wallet
It's a well kept secret, thought that I had better swallow it
Before they make me spit out the truth
Before they find you're lying about your youth

B movie, that's all you are to me
Just a soft soap story
Don't want the woman to adore me
You can't stand it when it goes from real to reel
Too real too real
You can't stand it when I throw punch lines you can feel" - Declan Patrick MacManus, 1979


Time to focus on the tasks at hand this morning: code reviews, finishing the software documentation presentation, continuing the java concurrency presentation and wondering where this all leads. Does the falling tree make a sound in the forest if no one is there to hear it?

Judge not lest ye be Judged? Ha! Here come tha Judge! Here come tha Judge!

Boy the Peacocks were struttin' their stuff in the Senate Cambers today, technicolor plumage at full staff. An entire day essentially wasted - the nominee not asked a single question - in other words, a normal first day of the Supreme Court Confirmation Hearing.

Filled to the brim with rich, delicious exhibitionism from Senator Foghorn, Senator Leghorn, the Gentleman from the Great Expanding State of Gasbag Blowhard, and the Lady from the Show-off State of Ego Unbounded. And this with Joe Biden safely tucked away now in the Executive Branch. We miss you in the Legislative Branch, Joe, but I only have so much space on my DVR hard drive and have to work during the day. (I say this with all love for our VP - I voted for him and love his unchecked honesty, if not his unchecked verbosity.)

Lindsey Graham, whose opinions I usually agree with about as frequently as I did with George Bush (which is to say, 'never'), actually got it about right today:
'... this is mostly about liberal and conservative politics more than it is about anything else'

Despite all that, I think today was the highlight. I think these things are more enjoyable when it's a Republican nominee in the hot seat: the Dems are much more entertainingly comical than their GOP counterparts when they're being indignant.

The Elephants are usually only more amusing off-duty when they're toe-tapping in mid-western airport men's rooms or hiking the Appalachian trail with Evita ('Don't Cry for me South Carolina'). There are always exceptions, but usually that happens when the off-duty buffoonery can't contain itself there (The Queen of Hip waders, for instance). In general, though, the Right are pretty consistently dull in their idiocy.


I'm a bleeding heart commie pinko liberal but even from my vantage point teetering as I am out on the left wing, I can see that the super villains are never nearly as buffoonish as the good guys are. The Joker, who is a clown for crying out loud, is the least comical character in the 'Dark Knight'. Remember: Obama's cool and relatively gaff-free maneuvering is an aberration and generally not the rule.

I don't wanna work, I just wanna bang on the drum all day ...

Interesting new study on swearing and lessening of pain - doubtlessly true to a degree, though not nearly so much as I wish. It's certainly not a substitute for a steady diet of drugs, alcohol, television, and general waling and gnashing of teeth. These days I stick to guttural sobbing, caffeine and television (Nancy Botwin - see ya tonight! Betty Drapper, see ya soon!)

Speaking of high pitched obnoxious noises, apparently our corporate landlord installed a jet engine up in the air conditioning vent of my office over the weekend and left it running. Takes me back to my Navy days sleeping in the top rack just below the aft flight deck and attempting to ignore the F-14s when they began firing their afterburners, powerless to silence them (I couldn't just throw on a robe, walk up the outboard ladder, knock on the door of the cockpit and ask them to please keep it down and apparently am now just as powerless to stop the madness here in my corporate ship).

But I digress once again.

And actually, now that I think about it, this current noise is more reminiscent of a dentist's drill.

Where the fuck is the maintenance guy I called two hours ago?!? The written expletive does not dull the pain of little nails being hammered into my skull from on high - guess it has to be verbal and the study amended.

Thank God for headphones and for Sirius Internet (especially when the iPod's left at home). Hello, First Wave and Faction (I do miss the Punk Channel ...)

Seventeen Years Past Due for "Carousel"

iPod Random Shuffle - 8pm on a Sunday. Only a couple of songs recorded in the last 20 years and very few artists that debuted after 1985 (actually, very few after 1979). God I'm a fossil.

• Sulphur to Sugarcane - Elvis Costello
• Rain - Beatles
• London Calling - Clash
• 5ive Gears in Reverse - Elvis Costello
• I Love a man in Uniform - Gang of Four
• Live Through This (are we there yet?) - Groovelily
• Dancing Queen - ABBA
  
• Galileo - Indigo Girls
• Please Mister Postman - Beatles
• Sixty Eight Guns - The Alarm
• Los Angeles - X
  
• The Boys of Summer - Don Henley
• Sleeping with the Television On - Billy Joel
• Backstreets - Bruce Springsteen
• Fortunate Son - Creedence Clearwater Revival
• The Blower's Daughter - Damien Rice
• That's Entertainment - The Jam
• I Melt with You - Modern English
• Private Idaho - B-52s
  
• Dress Rehearsal Rag - Leonard Cohen
• Pale Blue Eyes - Velvet Underground
• Desolation Row - Bob Dylan
• Soul Corruption - Graham Parker
• You cannot Win (if you do not Play) - Steve Forbert
• New York, New York - Nina Hagen
• Gimme Shelter - Rolling Stones
• Gloomy Sunday - Billie Holiday
• God - John Lennon
  
• Parting Gift - Fiona Apple
• Heroin - Velvet Underground
• Suzanne - Leonard Cohen

I realized that I was getting very old after I strained my back into the second mile of what I thought would be a relaxing jog on a mild summer evening. Christ, my body is falling apart, I thought - just a few weeks shy of 47 years. It's the new 27, though, right? Right? Who I am kidding? I'm not jogging, I'm running from the sandmen. When I finally limped up the stairs into the house, I shuffled back through the songs I'd been listening to and it only confirmed what my body had been saying: dinosaur. I couldn't even tell you what passes as 21st century popular, or cutting edge or even shitty music these days.

Gosh - quarter to 9 - almost time to put my dentures in the glass for the evening and tuck into bed ...

And enough entries into this #!)# blog, for crying out loud. You won't have anything left to scream into your pillow.

Anyway, bedtime for bonzo,

Yours truly,
Dorian Gray

Ladies and Gentleman, Diana Ross and the ...

Oh, boy, here we come! Time to make room on the DVR hard drive and schedule up the CSPAN because tomorrow starts Supreme Court Confirmation Hearing time in our nation's capital! I for one am fascinated by the process. Kind of for me like the Olympics is for normal folks. Call me sick but you can keep your 'Lost's and '24's and whatnot - give me the cast of characters that make up the Senate Judiciary Committee and the twists and turns of the plot (er, proceedings) as their egos and agendas clash with the professional life of the wise Latina jurist extraordinaire Sonia Sotomayor. Oh and they'll likely drag in her personal life as well for a good soaking. But let's be clear: it's not about her. It's about them.

I was working as a consultant in late 2005/early 2006 and between gigs the last two times the circus rolled into town with the Roberts and Alito confirmations, so I got to watch them both 'live'. I was rooting against them and will be rooting for Sotomayor, but that doesn't matter because the entertainment factor is the same and so in general is the outcome: ya gotta be a pretty extreme wack-job to not get confirmed at this point in the process. The handlers have already ensured you are a citizen, have no illegal help working for you or any unpaid taxes, the obvious stuff.

You're generally pretty assured of confirmation at this point, short of demonstrated habitual bestiality ('hiking the Appalachian Trail' with farm animals on more than one occasion, for instance), or proof of current status as a grand wizard in the KKK (the past is the past and being a mere 'member' can be forgiven, though there might be hard questions as to why you never got promoted to wizard). Christ, look at Clarence Thomas with his porn addiction and ass-pitching compulsion and Scalia, who's so far to the right that he probably struggles mightily to control himself from goose stepping and 'sig heil'ing in public (though he probably does both under the robe).

So it's the preening and prancing and dancing of the Senators that provides the kicks and I'll be enjoying every last minute of the experience. Let the games begin!

Burbing Bubbles, Freeing Willy and Resting in Peace (Ben, the two of us need look no more)

Holy Having-Fun-With-Elvis-Onstage, Batman - Has it really come to this?

I joked a couple of days ago that perhaps Michael Jackson would go on with his London Shows despite coming down with a bad case of death. I guess there's no joke as funny/sad as real life because as it turns out, 'he' is planning to do just that. The vultures are currently working overtime picking his bones clean while the name value is at its peak earning power (it tends to start to decay for celebs, much like the body, not all that long after death). But it takes massive balls to say that video footage of rehearsals for what would have been the London concerts are his 'Last Masterpiece' and to build some circus around this, charging real concert prices.

Sure, with Elvis they were picking clean his corpse many years before he actually died ('having fun' having come out a few years prior to the King keeling over on the john), but this was only because he mostly died after his 1968 television special (the last great thing he did). Say what you will about him, at least 'the Colonel' had the decorum to wait a couple of month before letting the feeding frenzy of shit flow forth. No such luck with MJ.

Somewhere, even Ben's descendants are scurrying through the gutter rolling their eyes and saying 'enough' already.

What we've got here is failure to communicate

There's a line from a novel or a book or something that I (and apparently Google) can't recall which goes something like "Typical WASP - loves animals but hates people."

That's me on a Sunday morning (well, on many mornings but especially 'the day of our lord').

I'm out early getting my usual coffee and am invariably stuck behind gaggle of 'hatbrakes' - more on this later - that only seem to drive when going to church on Sunday. That old used car salesman line apparently must sometimes be true. I'm left crawling along block after block, cornered with no way past them (they proceed in swarms like a Hell's Angels chapter out on a run).

After 10 minutes or so, I swear I see floats ahead of me, circus music fills my ears and big balloons in the sky blot out the sun. I have the urge to roll down the window and wave to the invisible crowds along my route - perhaps I should throw them candy. I must, after all, be in a parade for otherwise why would we be going so mother*!@! slow?!?

I'm not a bat-shit crazy driver - I obey(ish) the speed limits and traffic laws. And it's not like there are sights to see - it's the same boring neighborhood - no Christmas lights up (and its daytime anyway). Move! Don't keep God waiting - Bad enough you make him get up early on his Day Of Rest and haul his ass into some cramped building you constructed so you can feel less guilty the other six days of the week. I feel bad for him. And I'm an agnostic.

• Term: hatbrake
• Definition: See a brimmed 'hat' poking up from the driver's seat (but no head), prepare to brake.
• Origin: My sister and her friends circa early 70s. Stereotype that only older people wear brimmed hats that were popular during the earlier part of the 20th century and that they get shorter as they age. Also stereotypes them as driving slower.

I'm not fond of stereotypes as a rule - in fact I have seen plenty of tall, hatless older drivers that have laid on the horn because I was moving too slow for them - but I always liked the name and when you do see a brimmed hat popping up ahead of you, like as not you'll have to brake.

Sometimes that shark he looks right into ya ... he's got lifeless eyes. Black eyes. Like a doll's eyes.

I've been bouncing back and forth between Jaws and West Side Story and it's kind of surreal. They're two of my favorite movies. They both involve sharks. Only one involves jets. The better songs are in WSS (but the jams on Quint's boat aren't bad, and Quint has a way with the sea shanties). I give the nod to Jaws because of Quint:

• "I'm not talkin' 'bout pleasure boatin' or day sailin'. I'm talkin' 'bout workin' for a livin'. I'm talkin' 'bout sharkin'!"
• "Cage goes in the water, you go in the water. Shark's in the water. Our shark. [sings] Farewell and adieu to you, fair Spanish ladies..."
  
• "Y'all know me. Know how I earn a livin'. I'll catch this bird for you, but it ain't gonna be easy. Bad fish. Not like going down the pond chasin' bluegills and tommycods. This shark, swallow you whole. Little shakin', little tenderizin', an' down you go ... Ten thousand dollars for me by myself. For that you get the head, the tail, the whole damn thing."

When you're a jet you're a jet all the way - but I'm talkin 'bout workin' for a livin' - I'm talkin' about sharkin'

The rain falls down on last year's man

I see Vince of "ShamWow!" Infomercial fame is now hawking a new product, the "Slap Chop". On the surface he looks the same here - better certainly than he looked in his mug shot in March after getting busted for beating up a hooker in South Beach, FLA. But wait just a second. Turn up the sound a bit. Inch closer to the screen. Is there just a hint of a plaintive cry in his obnoxious cackle? Is there just a shadow of a tear rolling down his weasel-like cheekbone? Does he maybe look like he'd rather just curl up in a snuggie and have a good sob?

It could just be the onion that Vince is slap-chopping up but I think it's somehow more than that. He lost a couple of brother shit-slingers after all: pure-play pitchman Billy Mays and part time shills Ed McMahon and Karl Malden (apologies here to Karl, Oscar-winning actor of such classics as On The Water Front and Streetcar Named Desire, but the Amex ads overshadowed his earlier work).

Vince is only human and I'm sure there is a hole in his black heart right now.

Chin up, Vince!

The world needs pitchmen more than ever now to fill that void at 3 in the morning for those that don't have satellite or cable or DVDs or VHS or books or a life or a drug habit.

Put. That. Coffee. Down. Coffee's for closers only.

The 'motivational pep-talk' Alex Baldwin's character Blake gives to the sad sack realty sales office in Glengarry Glen Ross has been on my mind of late. It's a great performance, Baldwin's only scene in the movie (character and scene don't even exist in the original David Mamet stage play). The words are even better. Mamet, who wrote the screenplay as well, is one of my literary heroes (one of the few who ply their trade in the world of screen and stage plays rather than books). But I digress. The reason that the speech has been resonating with me lately is because despite the vitriol tone, it is a motivational speech and I've been attempting to try and understand all of the ways that individuals can be and are motivated.

"We're adding a little something to this month's sales contest. As you all know, first prize is a Cadillac Eldorado. Anybody want to see second prize? Second prize is a set of steak knives. Third prize is you're fired."

Now that's motivation.

Keeping your job might be a very primal motivation, but it's not a very uplifting one. Still, variations on Blake's talk likely took place in offices the world over this past week and sometimes for good reasons. Blake hammered home the overriding priorities in case there was confusion ("Always Be Closing" because "it's 'fuck' or 'walk'"). Sometimes it takes a punch in the stomach to wake a person up. God knows there are people where I work that I'd like to stick in a room with Blake and let him loose.

I'm looking more for the empowering, want-to-take-ownership kinds of motivation and how to instill that at the grass-roots level in an organization.

Time to look beyond Blake. I've poured through most of the "motivation" and "leadership" literature out there (Jack Walsh, Fearless Change, and 20 others not worth mentioning). Like most things in life, no silver bullet. Also like most things in life, I think it boils down to something much more simple: just find out what motivates you and then go to the employee directory and find out the same for each one of them. Probably the best thing I've read in this area is Andy Hunt's Pragmatic Thinking and Learning: he' talks about the Dreyfus Model of Skill Acquisition and what motivates an Expert in a particular skill is not the same thing in general that motivates a Novice.

Quick, favorite "one scene" movie characters:

1. Winston Wolfe, Pulp Fiction
2. Captain Koons, Pulp Fiction
   
3. Blake, Glengarry Glen Ross
4. Vincenzo Cocotti, True Romance
5. Drexl Spivey, True Romance
   
6. Bunny Lebowski, The Big Lebowski
7. Harry Lime, The Third Man

Always Be Closing

We definitely live in at least two realities on this planet these days - the real world and the surreal world. In the real world, the Prez makes nice with Russia and works the G8 in Italy while Lil' Kim Jong-Il launches Cyber warfare against mankind. In the surreal world, meanwhile, the headlines are screaming as to the whereabouts of the Corpse of Pop as we shake our collective heads over the sordid double life and grisly death of Steve McNair and his Dave and Buster's wack-job side dish.

MJ it seems can elude the paparazzi even in death, more mobile than Bernie on the weekend as he sneaks out of his own memorial, gold casket and all sliding through the tunnel under the Staples Center and onward to what we can only imagine is his final reward. Maybe he's decided to do those 50 shows over in England after all. The show must go on.

I'm not sure why the 'dark lifestyle' of Steve McNair is any surprise - the do-gooders of the world are always the ones with a graveyard full of skeletons in their closets. From Thomas Jefferson to Martin Luther King to Bill Clinton, the guys who could get things done - who are natural leaders - and who are able to do the most good in the world seem to be the ones who have a huge appetite for the forbidden and sometimes just the tawdry.

Obviously, MLK is in another league with regard to his influence on history, and Clinton was a pretty darn successful president. McNair, in the end, was simply a not-quite-hall-of-fame-caliber NFL football player. But he did do a lot for his community and for charity. He liked to drink and he liked the ladies and he had some piss-poor judgment that killed him. And we'll no doubt be slammed over the head with the details of that via an endless parade of 20/20, E True Hollywood Story, 48 Hours, Lifetime TV Movies, and probably lots more.

Hopefully not too many kids lost a hero this week. Me, my heroes were always the ones with their skeletons in plain sight - Give me Hunter Thompson, Robert Downey, Jr. and William Burroughs and you can have Albert Schweitzer, Mother Theresa and Mahatma Ghandi. And Bono for that matter. I can only hope for the sake of our country that smoking is not Obama's biggest vice. I supported and voted for you, Mr. President - I'm counting on something more. :-)

As for comments related to the real world? Ahh - I don't know what to think (the Daily Show is in reruns this week - I'll think again come Monday).

OxiCleanCodone

I see that Madonna is going to pay tribute to Michael Jackson at an upcoming concert. Good for her. But who is going to pay tribute to T.V. pitchman Billy Mays who also just passed away?

"He sold more OxiClean than Andy Warhol sold Campbell's Soup," cousin Dean Panizzi said in eulogizing Billy Mays and comparing him to the Pittsburgh-born pop artist who turned soup cans into works of art.

Your cousin is one thing - but where are his 'peers'?

Is Vince of ShamWow! fame going to do the honors?

Maybe the Dos Equis 'most interesting man in the world' might say some words: "I don't always buy 'As Seen on TV' products, but when I do, I prefer those from Billy Mays. Rest in Peace, my friend."

With his passing, I may never need to reach for the volume control again. Hopefully, he was a toupee donor and his hairpiece was transplanted to a needy recipient.

Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot Fighting in the Captain's Tower

I am once again finding myself re-reading A Confederacy of Dunces. For sure this book is and will likely remain my hands down #1 favorite. I don't think I'll ever forgive John Kennedy Toole for taking his own life at such a young age and denying the world more wonders such as this. If you haven't read this, do yourself a favor and pick it up ASAP - it is amazing on so many dimensions.

For my own amusement, I took a quick spin through my bookshelves to see what other books stuck with me over the years and would constitute the Buzzard literary top 20 (okay, as it turns out, top 21). Not surprisingly, the protagonist of one of them is a guy obsessed with ranking things (whether music, or girlfriends or what-have-you). So, in nearly no particular order after Dunces, ...

• A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
• Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Hunter Thompson (okay, maybe this is #2 for me)
• A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving (I liked this better than Garp or Cider House)
• Lives of Monster Dogs - Kirsten Bakis (Brilliant book, written in 1998 but she hasn't written another)
• A Million Little Pieces - James Frey (I liked this even better after I found out a lot of it was made up)
• Junky - William Burroughs (Junky beat writer extraordinaire)
• Monster - Sanyika Shakur (Former LA Crip - great writing)
• Trinity - Leon Uris
• High Fidelity - Nick Hornby (lots of obsessive top 5/10 lists - love Hornby but this is my fave)
• American Psycho - Bret Easton Ellis
• The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
  
• Out - Natsuo Kirino
• Mysteries of Pittsburgh - Michael Chabon
  
• Hell's Angels - Hunter Thompson
• Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison
  
• Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung - Lester Bangs
• Something Happened - Joesph Heller
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
• Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs - Chuck Klosterman
• The Bonfire of the Vanities - Tom Wolfe
• Manchild in the Promised Land - Claude Brown