Burying the Lead while Dating the Metal (and doin' da Foxtrot with Ma "Half-baked Alaska" Kettle)

Burying the Lead

My buddies at the oh-so-unbiased Wall Street Journal are doing their level best to fan the flames of outrage over the admittedly far - FAR - from perfect health care reform bill. Well, well, well. Big surprise. Typical left wing propaganda from the Murdoch-owned paper (we all know Rupert is a commie pinko given the well known liberal leanings of his Fox News).

The latest headline from the Journal screams: Married Couples will Pay More for Health Insurance Under New Bill! Way down in the gooey center of the article hiding in the shadows of that screed lurks a toss-off noting that "more" only applies to the new insurance exchanges and does not affect those who are currently insured.

Venture deeper down into the dark and damp ink stains of this piece and you'll trip over still more "minor details" explaining that a couple would pay more only if their combined income serves to push them over the poverty line. Well, that's not fair but alas tends to be the way things often work (in government and private sector alike). The article doesn't - but should - add that those exchanges are not even an option for these same couples currently. Today, married or single, these fine folks would be paying quite a bit more for private insurance - more even than the "more" WSJ is up in arms about - or live with none at all. But why let the truth get in the way of a good headline?

In my opinion the health care bill in the form that most probably will be signed into law will contain some good but a shitload of bad along for the ride. Almost all the badness can be divided into two steaming piles:

1. The compromises to the right made to appease the fear mongers and gain at least limited Republican support (of which none was provided in the end).
2. State-specific pork that often has little or nothing to do with health care reform but was nonetheless stuffed into the bill in typical beltway fashion. It's the manifestation of the tax-and-spend stereotype aimed (often rightly) at liberal members of Congress but which is in fact practiced by both sides in an institutionalized manner that - God please - shouldn't outta be there but will very likely never go away.
   

Are the small diamonds in the dogshit of the health care legislation enough to justify the thing? I think so. But only with some big bright red warning stickers spelling out the must-haves:

1. Strong enough provisions to ensure private insurance companies don't jack their rates up out of fear they'll lose customers
2. Strong enough provisions to ensure people who can afford private insurance pay for it rather than latching onto the government dole. Or rather I should say the government supplemented dole, since the public option was removed out of misguided fear over impending socialism, death panel hokey and whatnot - this will be the death rattle of the bill probably.
   

Ahh, let's just face the facts that we don't have the national fortitude to do this thing. Fuck the poor. If they want medical attention, they can get off their asses and make some money. Clearly they don't want/need such luxuries. Need a pediatrician, kid? Then start stitching me up some Nikes! It's a win-win solution: we won't have to pass off our hard earned sneaker money to some third world sweatshop once we reinstate these fine institutions back into the economy of the good ol' U.S. of A. and the poor kids will be able pay for their whole family's health care! "Problem solved from your end," to paraphrase Office Space.

Dating the Metal

And now for something completely different (but with some oddly indirect parallels)...

Seems the geeks in the lab have knocked out a bang-up next generation companion for those who cannot - or prefer not to - connect with a real-life sweetheart. This isn't your father's blow-up doll, gang: it's fully electronic and comes with customizable personality in addition to the usual "bells and whistles" (and whips and chains, if you like). Mmmmm. For those saavy investors, this might well be the next big thing: the electronic pimp industry. Get in on the ground floor. Never under estimate the number of lonely and social awkward people there are out there or the fact that these qualities are often proportional to the disposable income these folks have at the ready, just looking for a Roxxxy the Sexbot (or Wild Wendy, Mature Martha, Frigid Farrah and S&M Susan - get 'em while supplies last).


Sista Sarah goes Foxtrotting

No big shocker this. Our Dull Eyed Lady of the Ice Land (apologies to Sara Dylan) signs on with Fox News as their sort of roving (rogueing?) commentator and the defacto Poet Laureate for the network. Though sadly no sign her interpreter Bill Shatner will be enlisted by Fox to jazzercise her sonnets like he's done so successfully in the past, putting a beat to her tweets. Pity. Perhaps he'll freelance as he's been known to do. I look forward to the work. From both of them. And now Tina will have plenty of television footage in the years to come when she will no doubt dust off the glasses 'n goofy smile and sashay forth back onto the SNL stage for the cameos we so loved last fall.

Enough Already

I swore I'd clam up until Friday and so now I will (unless I can't and then I won't). I figure this post has enough vitriol, bombast, smarmy sarcasm and commie-pinko socialist broadsides to piss just about everyone off in one way or another. If so, well then my work here is done.

Greed Heads and Tales

I finally caught Neill Blomkamp's District 9 Saturday morning. Brilliant film on so many different levels. Messy and wildly uneven, utterly original. Not necessarily very singular in the story itself, which at its core is as old as the corruption, oppression and racism that fuels it. No, this originality springs from its style and form, its base simplicity. The melding of science fiction into a grim story of slums, poverty, indifference, greed, abandonment, exile, comeuppance, redemption. No storybook ending and with very few truly sympathetic characters. It's not pretty - it made me almost physically ill at one point - but it is in the end beautiful.

I followed it up with a recording my DVR slurped up off IFC: The Source. It's a 1999 documentary on the Beats, covering the scene and people from the 1944 introduction of Ginsberg to Kerouac through 1997 when Ginsberg and Burroughs drifted off this mortal coil. Real interesting mix of historical footage, interviews, and contemporary celeb fans Johnny Depp, Dennis Hopper and John Turturro providing dramatic interpretations of the words of Beat pioneers. I identify with the Beats more than any other "movement" and have always been fascinated with those who forged the philosophical, cultural and creative ideals behind the name. The movement encompassed a mishmash of individualists, none of whom played bongos or sported a goatee or uttered "daddy-o" except in ironic disdain. Great stuff.

Great stuff to come in this vein too!  A movie focused on the 1957 obscenity trial resulting from the publication of Ginsberg's poem Howl the year before makes its theatrical debut on the 21st of this month - fittingly entitled Howl - and guess who has a prominent role in the flick?  None other than my gal Mary-Louise Parker!  I'll be on a break from work and will be lining up to see it for sure (my favorite actress and my favorite poem together in one place - could be a disaster but I'd never know).

Anyway, clearly I believe that digression - not discretion -  is the better part of valor.  What was my original point ... ?

... oh, yeah - lots of philosophical and political similarities between District 9 and the works of the Beats: fear and suspicion of conformity, oppression, corporate and government power, etc. So I worked up a sizable anti-establishment head of steam fueled by the combined energies of this double feature. When success is measured by power and money, the successful will often become so largely based upon their greed. Not always, certainly. But often. So it comes to pass that the greed-heads rule. Not all of them make it big, of course: there are plenty of poor, weak, loser greed-heads (often they end up being the loudest to compensate for their lack of success). No, it's only the most ambitious and driven of this breed who rise to the top. But rise they do. They can't be stopped, it's the human condition. Bummer.

After that one-two punch I changed gears to watch some playoff football. But with the TV sound down and stereo volume up, blasting my latest iTunes playlist "greedheads" (lots of Clash, Rage, Gang of Four, MC5, Sex Pistols, Black Flag, X ...)

I turned off the football last night after the Jets win, deciding to pass on the Eagles demise and instead catch another flick I missed in theatrical release: The Watchmen. It kept to my anti-establishment theme of the day and was dazzling, dark, and supremely entertaining. Good call on my part.

Sunday's turned into a very lazy day. So lazy in fact that I co-opted what was Saturday's post - this one - and made it Sunday's "gem" so that I'd feel the day wasn't an entire waste on all fronts. Well, why couldn't you have simply whipped up an honest-to-goodness new piece, you say? Did I say it was a lazy day? It was that lazy. And I really don't have anything to say.

I'll be enjoying the Simpson's 20th Anniversary special tonight ("In 3D, on Ice!"), but likely not the new episode of the show it celebrates scheduled just before it. It's my opinion that the first 9 or so years of the Simpsons was the best television ever produced before or since (and I include all categories of show and/or broadcast in that equation). It chronicled (and skewered) contemporary society better than any art I've come across (better than the news and other non-fiction stuff too).

The best comedy show from the beginning to the end of its run was also produced in the 1990s: Seinfeld. If Groening and company had pulled up stakes in 1998, the Simpsons would win that prize in my pantheon as well. It's not just a generational thing, either: I've been an ardent student of television my whole life and have seen them all at length. Every episode of I Love Lucy and Your Show of Shows, through the Honeymooners, Get Smart, Barney Miller, Cheers, and so on. They certainly deserve mention, as does Arrested Development in this millennium. Meanwhile, the last 11 or so years have been increasingly uneven for the Simpsons, but I guess that was bound to happen.  It still has more moments as a shadow of its former self than most shows have in their prime.  So - happy 20th, Springfield!

Now it's back to the grindstone for one last work week in corporate IT as a full time employee, at least for the foreseeable future. I'll be sure and soak in the political infighting and typically dysfunctional corporate goings on. Now to be sure, I'll see it all again soon in new settings but from the perspective of a consultant, an outsider, a dispassionate observer. And with the knowledge that this too shall pass (in a few days or weeks when that engagement ends and I can move on to the next happy corporate family with their own unique twists on the typical corporate pain points). But before all that, a break for a couple of weeks. Talk to you then.

The Jan 8-Ball Posse

Elvis Presley, David Bowie and Larry Storch (F Troop's Corporal Agarn) were all born on this day.

Man, those cats could have combined to make a dynamite early 70's movie franchise. Sort of a rockin', druggin', slap stick Odd Couple (the Odd Triplets). Or perhaps a less sane variant on the Three Stooges. Elvis all loaded up with fried banana sandwiches and firearms, the contents of a small pharmacy coursing through his veins; Bowie all androgynified and strung out, his Ziggy mullet flapping in the breeze; and finally Larry picking up the rear in full-out Storch-itude, hanging with Sgt. O'Rourke and the Hekawis busting on Captain Parmenter.

As Cher sang, "If I could turn back time." Indeed. The accompanying music video for her 1989 hit had Sonny's already middle aged gal dolled up in a skin-tight flesh colored outfit dancing on the USS Missouri battleship surrounded by Navy "crew members", the irony of the words seemingly lost to all. Cher attempted to turn back time in Nip/Tuck fashion and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. In fact, maybe we can turn back time for our Elvis/Bowie/Storch bonanza with some FX magic of our own.

Larry and Bowie are still with us, so maybe we dispense with the full-on CGI and can option this film series idea with the real-deal codgers themselves, targeting it at the Octogenarian demographic (and the many of us who are Octogenarians at heart). With still just a bit of help from Lucasfilm's Industrial Light and Magic crew. The Marx Brothers meets Cheech and Chong meets the cast of Cocoon. The Three Amigos in Depends (hell, Elvis was wearing Depends in his 30s, so in a way it's a tribute to his memory as much as it is to their advancing years). Grumpy Stoned Men.

We just need an Elvis replacement. Lisa Marie? Nah, too young. Elvis Costello? Perhaps Presley was about more than just a quirky first name. We need an aging, pill popping iconic rock star with a ballooning weight problem and delusions of grandeur. And an enabling posse of hangers on. That shouldn't be difficult. Oh, that's right: this rocker also needs to be alive. That might be more challenging. Christ, grab one of his contemporaries - both Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard are still breathing, kind of, and seem to meet most of the criterion. But still, they simply aren't The Pelvis. Somehow that combination of rebellious sneering rocker, Mama's boy backwoods hick, and pill-popping paranoid batshit loon is harder to find in a single persona than one might think.

Ahh! It seems R. Kelly was also born on January 8th, so let's go ahead and inject some young blood into this would-be celluloid gang. It's now becoming sort of like a cross generational Mod Squad! Though it needs that certain special Peggy Lipton-style lady to truly make it mod. Amber Benson belongs to this special fraternity of "celebs" born on Jan 8 so why not let her in on the fun? Who the hell is she, you ask? Exactly. And in the spirit of 60/70's crime dramas, I'm thinking we want to make this gang more Ironside-like. As luck would have it, guess who else was born on 01/08? No, not Raymond Burr (he's dead anyway), I'm talking about Professor Stephen Hawking.

We've got the makings of a real rock and roll Ocean's Eleven, bent on drunken acid and slap stick high drama with some commercial grade physics thrown in to satisfy the public's insatiable hunger for the hard sciences! Let's call it The Jan 8-Ball Posse featuring "Howlin' Black Hole" Hawking.

We better hurry, though. Storch is pushing 90, Hawking's been living on borrowed time for 40 some years, and timing is everything. I'll start work on a draft treatment for the inaugural romp down 8-Ball Alley and ring up Hollywood at once to start the funding round. Gotta work on my sales pitch, though: "Man, if the kids loved Twilight I can only imagine how they'll eat this up ..."

Billy Dee - The New Williams on Tiger's Bag

What could be better than Billy Dee Williams hawking Tiger Woods limited edition commemorative collectible Franklin Mint "mistress" plates?

I missed this "ad" when it first made the rounds on Jimmy Kimmel several weeks ago. As soon as I saw ol' Billy Dee, though, I knew it would be good. Any man who can connect sex with Colt 45 malt liquor and make it work the way he did back in the day is a god in my book. The sly smile and a lovely lady in waiting dressed across his back, she half in the bag soused on that putrid concoction and gripping Billy to keep from collapsing. "It works every time," he'd purr. Billy made Colt the go-to GHB of its time. But, you know ... classier.

When Billy Dee made a galactic Judas sympathetic with Lando Calrissian in Empire Strikes Back - well, that was just icing on the cake. As if to say, "Hey, the sex/Colt 45 thing wasn't just a fluke - I got mad skills, people."

And now he's got Tiger's back, helping him compensate for lost endorsement income through this new revenue stream. Making lemonade out of lemons (or perhaps the better metaphor might be "condominiums out of condoms").

These Billy Lee collectible plates are just the tip of this product line iceberg, I'm sure: t-shirts, jewelry, wall art, press-on tattoos, and so on. Billy knows what he's doing, Tiger; just follow his lead. When he gives you a wink you know it's time to do your part: go hit the swanky nightclubs and seduce a new special "plate" for the collection. Billy Dee snaps the pics, the Franklin Mint fires up its ovens, and the purchasing public is satisfied for another month. Then the dance begins again. Who has time to play golf?

2010 - Free Flowing Pipes and other Resolution Types

So here we are, it's 2010 and I'm back home in Philly after a red-eye flight from Phoenix. I'm pretty wrecked from lack of sleep, screwed up diet and jet lag.

Which is to say, just about my normal self.

I'm going to kick off my New Year's Resolutions today (no waiting for Chinese New Year for me this time - well, maybe for some of the more challenging resolutions, but not all of them). I've been batting back and forth exactly what these resolutions should be, of course. They're much harder to keep when you're not sure what they are, after all. Or much easier, depending on your perspective.

So ... ?

• Exercise. This is an easy one. In short, get more of it. Now, the most straightforward manner in which to tackle this one would be to join a gym. I'm not very straightforward though. First I need to get into good enough shape to confidently expose my body to the public ridicule a gym invites. So I'm first setting up a two month private regiment of calisthenics to get to that point.

• Diet. Bluntly, I gotta get regular. I mean Activia * Super Colon Blow * Phillips' Colon Health = Me in 2010. Last year was a world of shit on many levels but alas they were all metaphorical. I'm looking forward to a world of shit in 2010, but only in the literal sense of the term. I just need to keep to the philosophy of my new mentor, Phillips' The Colon Lady: don't ever quit / in your quest to take a shit. I'm paraphrasing, but you get the gist.
  

• Sell my house. Or at least fix it up to the point where it might possibly be sold for more than the spare change in the pockets of prospective buyers. And before it morphs from a sort-of Money Pit to a super massive Big Bucks Black Hole from which no income can escape. My idea of home repair is switching the channel to an episode of This Old House and even that doesn't hold my interest for very long. That's generally as close as I get. I was made for urban condo/townhouse living, it just took me a decade or so to realize it. Fuck it, that's a lie: I knew it almost right away. The sewer backed up and flooded the finished basement of the decapitated "animal house" a group of us had been renting prior to my purchase, making it almost instantly unlivable (that basement housed two of the four bedrooms). The drunken landlord who used to steal our beer and lined the insides of the walls with the empties attempted to shovel the shit out but he was comically incompetent and besides there was no turning back. I had convinced myself that it was time to buy and rushed the process given the sea of human waste in my rear view mirror gaining on me. One year after closing, I was ready to sell. Fast forward another nine years and I'm really ready to sell. Funny how the topics of fucked up pipes and shit keep coming up.

• Meet the gal of my dreams, go all romantic comedy crazy, and live happily ever after. This would be tops on the list but I'm fairly unlikely to achieve it and I don't want to place the bar too high only to disappoint. Baby steps. A few push-ups and sit-ups. Regular trips to the can. A job I don't feel sick to my stomach going to each day and a home I don't feel nauseated returning to each evening. Once those are in place, perhaps then I can aspire to greater heights. Besides, I've been rocking the eHarmony thing the past little while, so technically I'm working on the resolution. Thus far, no long term sparks. Perhaps they discovered this blog and then subsequently ran for the hills? :-)   I sound like Barney Miller's Fish half the time here, and I imagine that's generally not too attractive. Unless you happen to be a budding Bernice.
 

 

And now for something completely different: a non-sequitur I just had to share ...

On E!'s The Soup as part of their Clipdown '09 retrospective they were flashing an excerpt from one of the daytime judge/court shows that hit my funny bone pretty hard, though you likely have to see it to get it. One of the complainants worked as a prostitute at Nevada's Bunny Ranch and she was rattling off her life's accomplishments thus far, including an honorable discharge from the Air Force and the "Air Force's highest academic award, which I've used extensively in my 19 years in the Nevada brothel industry."

The judge inquired as to how one goes from the Air Force to the Bunny Ranch. Her response? "Well, it's only like an hour away." The Air Force must be so proud.

Well, I'll be blogging little over the next couple of weeks while I plunge into work to do the transition dance.  Thereafter, I may have quite a bit more time for blogging and such as I'll be taking at least a week off prior to moving onto the next phase of my career.  If I get lonely, perhaps I'll join the Air Force ...

Christmas Pills, New Year Thrills, and Dicking around the Holidays

I had planned on steering clear of this blog until the new year. But I've got insomnia and perhaps pounding out a bit of drivel here beats counting sheep. It's been an interesting time thus far with the family in Arizona. Lots of campfire stories haunted by ghosts of familial dysfunction past. But primarily just stuffing my pie hole and vegging. Serious vegging. Which makes up for the lack of vegetables in my diet this week (unless the coco beans from chocolate count).

My sister Lynn is good at pulling on threads of dormant memories I'd thought were lost to me forever, unraveling a tapestry of singular moments in time. An elementary school teacher's name, a neighbor's eccentricity, commercials on TV, jobs held as a kid, the kinds of candy found at our little corner shops.

Each one of these off-hand remembrances lets loose a flood of imagery, at once dated and yet timeless, uniquely local yet universal. Penny candy back when it cost one cent. The lady across the street with the one crazy eye who would peek out her shutters all day. Silly shit like this, one memory tumbling into another like a string of dominoes toppling over.

I've been focused on the personal rather than the political this week; in fact, I haven't much been paying any mind to the goings on in the US or the world.

I'm vaguely aware of a would-be terrorist managing to thwart our vaunted security, almost blowing up a plane coming into Detroit International from the Netherlands and that Jon Gosselin's apartment in NYC got ransacked (whether by evildoers or his own publicity-hungry hand). Both important topics to be sure, but uninteresting to me this particular week.

Dick Cheney continued to make an ass of himself unabated this week, but that's hardly news. I swear the guy would laugh with glee upon learning Santa's sleigh had been hijacked by terrorists, the reindeer booby-trapped with high explosives and the sled filled to overflowing with bags of mustard gas before being crashed into the side of a children's orphanage if he thought it would cause some embarrassment to the Obama Administration. I don't say this in defense of Obama, who has disappointed me in many and varied ways in 2009. Still, as they say, a bad day golfing is still better than the best day at work. Obama/Biden are my "golf" to the Bush/Cheney "work" in this analogy.

Cheney's just plain bad news, the evil ogre under the bridge. And to think I had some vaguely positive things to say about the guy as SecDef during Desert Storm. I guess back then he was still at least partly Anakin Skywalker. He's clearly embraced the dark side since then (perhaps he always had and I just didn't see it). Some might call him Richard but to me he's the ultimate Dick.

Thankfully, I needn't concern myself with things politico right now as Maureen Dowd seems to be taking care of this for me. Dowd's piece today as usual echoes my thoughts from a political perspective to a tee. Though, oddly, she neglects to mention Jon G. But that's okay. Thanks, Mo.

We're off to see some sights in Phoenix this afternoon and evening. Specifically, the Desert Botanical Gardens and then the Zoo Lights. Film at 11. As for New Year's Eve tomorrow, it'll be a low-key affair, I'm sure. Very much unlike the drunken Vegas group hug I stumbled into this decade through. Both have their charms depending on your perspective.

I'm moving on to a new phase of my professional career come the middle of January so I need to start mentally preparing myself for that now. Finally, a New Year's Resolution I can keep! I'm headed out of the safety - and madness - of corporate life back into consulting again. Both have their crisp highs and deep lows - much like the Bose Wave System, according to their commercials - but at least with consulting the lows are transient (of course, so are the highs). So I'm nervous but excited.

I will say that the Christmas pills make this time of year bearable. Just be sure you have a festive container for said pills. Said containers make fantastic gifts. What are Christmas pills? Why they're the pills you put into the Christmas Pill Containers. Little magnetic twist-in-half or head-pops-open Snowmen or Santas or other similar figurines. Containers that some might assume are meant to contain other items (candy, spice, etc.). But they are in fact meant to contain pills. Screamers. Uppers. Downers. Laughers. The pills that get you from Thanksgiving to New Year without going insane. Rush understands this. As a bonus, they double as great Christmas Tree Ornaments.

"... She goes running for the shelter / Of her Santa's Little Helper / And it helps her on her way / Helps her through her busy day ..."

In any case, "talk to you" in 2010 ...

Some Festivus Vitriol (The Airing of Grievances)

The beginning of another year is bearing down on us while most of this one sits in the rear view mirror. Large numbers of those who put pen to paper (bits to disk? words to the web?) are cranking out their lists of the best and worst (and best of the worst or worst of the best). Cliched for sure, an easy dodge. Being a cliched dodgy sort, I might be tempted to follow suit. But I'll resist the urge. This may be my last post of the year after all and if it is, I'd like to go out on a higher note than that.

Maybe just some good ol' Festivus Airing of Grievances. Who am I pissed off at this year?

• The Philadelphia Eagles leadership, for hiring a serial sadist onto their team as a role model to all the football loving children the world over and now the Eagles players too, for voting him the 2009 recipient of the Ed Block Courage Award. Isn't that what the Wizard bestowed upon the Cowardly Lion? I only wish this squad very bad things in the weeks and months ahead.
• Congress, for dessimating the healthcare legislation and then jerking themselves off in self congratulation over it. I can't stand either side of the aisle (or the aisle itself these days). I can't very well blame them - it's the system, which might be the best in the world but still blows pretty bad these days.
  
• The lunatic fringe, who ultimately twisted the admittedly already very rubbery spines of the aforementioned legislators through their flames of bombastic hysteria. I can't really be all that mad at them, though, since they're only doing what they think is right, however misguided I might believe it to be. It's the cynical, money-grubbing swine who trumpet this kind of message for the sake of publicity and profit, pretending like they actually believe it. The ones who turn their high-powered fans on the flames. They're the ones I've got a bone to pick with. Clowns like Glenn Beck. That's way too easy. I'm lazy, so easy is good.
  
• Oprah, for the imminent destruction of my beloved Discovery Health Channel. Why, oh, why OWN, Oprah? And why does its introduction mean the end of Discovery Health? What do they have to do with one another? Do you really hate discussions of incontinence that much?
  
• Barack Obama, for being way too compromising - stand up for your core beliefs, man! Intelligent compromise in matters of foreign affairs can be good, but fuck 'em when it comes to domestic matters. You're being accused of being a Kenyan-born communist dictator already so it's high time you acted more like one! You know what I mean ... talk to Oprah, will ya? Order a cease and desist on the Discovery Health dissolution. I don't want Dr. G performing an autopsy on the very network that airs her show (I think the universe would explode).
  
• Saturday Night Live, for being consistently not funny (I'm assuming this is unintentional but I could be wrong: they seem so good at it).
  
• My neighbors, for being snow blowing bullies (see My Neighbors Blow for details).
  
• Walmart. 'nuff said. Except the online caskets. I think those are pretty neat, as anyone who's slogged through this drivel knows all too well.
  

That's enough vitriol (and I'm fresh out of Geritol).

I've got an early flight tomorrow so it's off to bed soon. After catching Heathers for the umpteenth time on IFC. Gotta love such a sentimental tale during this joyous holiday season.

Happy Holidays and a Grand New Year to all. I can't wait to kick 2009 to the curb. Christ, did somebody on TV just say "Sarah Palin is the Greta Garbo of American Politics" or are my ears malfunctioning!?! Nope, I just hit rewind and there it is. Huh? Apparently because she grants so few interviews. Still, I don't see it. I guess if Garbo was a batshit loon and had a terminal case of Twitter Tourette Syndrome. Kick it to the curb indeed.