Thursday, December 31, 2009

happy new year, rick & laura, wherever you are

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funny how things work sometimes--a song comes up on shuffle just as the alcohol's starting to work its dark magic, a blogpost is born which sets off a train of thought...
and thus, last night's post leads to this one.

since moving from austin to los angeles i've made that long, bleak drive back and forth across the desert many times, but never more memorably than the trip from hell that took place exactly 20 years ago this night.

i blame myself, of course--if i hadn't abandoned my GM ethos and bought a goddam ford, the whole thing never woulda happened.


whatever--here's the story:




after arriving in los angeles in the fall of 1989 with little more than my graduation-present bmw and the clothes on my back, i accept not only a job with a celebrity architect who would ultimately use and abuse me, but also the ungrudging hospitality of rick and laura, who freely offer up to me the couch in their small one-bedroom pacific palisades apartment until such time as i manage to get on my feet.

[rick's generosity i sorta understand, him being my best friend from architecture school and all, but his new wife laura loving me from day one is a total fuckin' fluke which in my idiot youth i accept without question.]

after almost two months of enforced proximity during which they never even once bitch about my intrusion into their lives, i save up enough money not only for my own place, but to haul all my shit from texas out to the west coast.

it's christmastime and we're all flying back to texas--i suggest that in lieu of their paying for a return trip, they save a little money and drive back with me in the bright blue ford truck i just bought long-distance to drag a u-haul full of my shit from texas back to california. hell, it'll be an adventure!

they agree, their only proviso being that i get 'em back in time for the new years eve party they're committed to down in redondo beach.

[idiots--if they'd only known.]

i fly back to texas, enjoy christmas with my family, pick up the truck, try to ignore that it doesn't look as good as it did in the pictures, rent the u-haul, load it up with everything i own, pick up rick and laura on the afternoon of the 30th--plenty of time, i tell them and myself--and we head west.

by the time we hit fredricksburg about 70 miles out, we know we're in trouble--the truck is smoking--but we're young and dumb and high-spirited so we press on.

halfway to el paso the oil light comes on and we're like, what the fuck? we stop at a 7-11 in some podunk west texas town and it takes six quarts into the smoking crankcase to even register on the dipstick so we load up a few cases in the bed, figuring that as long as we add a quart every hundred miles or so we'll be ok, right?

somewhere between el paso and las cruces it gets bad--it's dark and we're climbing in altitude and the truck's sputtering madly and losing power and not rising to the challenge and we all just know the thing's about to die, and laura [at the wheel, scared shitless], turns to rick and me and says, "should i pull over?"

shivering, huddled together for warmth [did i mention the heater didn't work?] we both yell, NO!, she floors it and the motherfucker somehow keeps going.

it was that way all across the cold, dark desert that night--white knuckles on the steering wheel, any minute that piece o' shit coulda died and taken us with it, and we all knew it.

but that wasn't the point of that night--or this post.

the point of this post--and what i've never, ever forgotten--is that no matter how dark it got that night, and no matter how cold and scared we each were, rick and laura and i stayed strong, gritted our teeth and smiled for each other, and that made all the difference.

[and in case you're interested: yeah we made it, and rick and laura ultimately made their new years' eve party in redondo just in time, while all i was capable of once we safely landed was kneeling down, kissing the LA asphalt and collapsing into their bed.]

this one's from back when cars and songs on the radio still meant something


[and because it came up on shuffle tonight]

it's sometime after midnight on a cold, starlit evening in 1990 and i'm flying westward at 90 mph across the barren new mexico desert in my brother's pristine '72 lincoln mark iv [why? don't ask].

cigarette in my left hand, big gulp between my legs and thoroughly sick of the three eight-track tapes that came with the car, i'm scanning the empty AM dial for something--anything--when the auto-seek locks onto some obscure country station somewhere featuring a song i'd never heard before but which has me from note one.

when the signal suddenly fades just as the guy's bringing it home, i slam on the brakes, slew sideways across three lanes of I-10 to a screeching, smoking halt and reverse at high speed back to where it comes in clear again.

if you're one of those people who has never understood country music, i urge you to listen to this track all the way to the end, because it comes about as close to perfect as any country song ever recorded.

and unlike me, you won't have to sit in the middle of a deserted freeway to do so.


Tuesday, December 29, 2009

notes on christmas passed

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much as i love it, austin's always been artificial--it was this fun place where my brother and sister followed me down from east texas for college, and where i would spend eleven years of my life, but it was never supposed to be where my mother would end up.

* * * * *

when we were kids, she'd come in after a long day at work with her arms full of groceries and ask our slack, lazy asses sprawled in front of the tv what we wanted for dinner. we'd usually each come up with something different, and more often than not she'd accommodate us by whipping up three different meals with seemingly effortless ease, all served steaming hot at the same time. we naturally took this shit for granted.

this year as always, she promised to cook for christmas-eve dinner the full, traditional thanksgiving spread i rarely make it home for anymore. i'm a little concerned when i get in on the 22nd and realize that she hasn't yet commenced the usual preparations, and when the 23rd passes without much progress i wonder if maybe she's no longer up to the challenge.

i needn't have worried--by the time i rouse my ass outta bed on christmas eve, she'd been up for hours cooking and it was all done to perfection, complete with three different pies for dessert.

* * * * *

all my drunken good intentions to look up old friends went--just like the last trip, and the one before that--by the wayside; instead, shackled by the enforced sobriety necessitated by family proximity, i reverted to my normal shut-down self and stuck close to home and hearth for the duration of my time in austin.

it was ok--we had a good time.

* * * * *

watching some ironic i-hate-my-family holiday special, my mother snorts and says to no one in particular, "hell, i'd lay down across a railroad track if i could spend another christmas with my mother and daddy."

if life follows its natural order, i imagine one of these days i'll say pretty much the same thing.



sober update: good god, and to think alcohol used to cheer me up.

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

i really should get out and walk more often

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last-minute as always, head over to century city shopping center for the annual ordeal, see all the cars tryin to stuff themselves into every available entrance like ten pounds of shit into a two-pound bag, say to myself "hell, no," park on an off-street half a mile away and make my way back to the place on foot.

two hours later, heading empty-handed back down a cold, corporate stretch of santa monica boulevard toward my little truck--reminded once more why i hate malls and everything in 'em--i'm brought up short as i cross a side street and come across this modest white frame structure that in twenty years of driving up and down santa monica boulevard i'd never noticed and that by all rights shouldn't be there anymore.

scanning across the facade, my eye finds its entrance and it stops me in my tracks


i wasn't expecting zen perfection, especially here. and "barn" rings a bell, but i can't place it--all i can think is, god, i wanna get inside this place.

it's locked-up and dark--all i can do is whip out the iphone and snap it for posterity and later googling.

[tell you the truth, at first i figured some evil genius must've bonsai-ed that spindly tree to grow in just that way and then killed it at the apex of its development, until i came across the following picture from last summer online--guess it's still alive after all]


turns out 10300 santa monica boulevard was the live-work space of a. quincy jones, a modernist architect whose work i've long admired. he and his wife bought the barnlike building back in 1965, and he remade it as both his studio and their home. he died in 1979, and she's lovingly kept it just as he left it ever since.

until just last month, anyway, when she [or, more likely, her estate] finally sold it for a paltry $2 million.

for context, here's a macro-shot of the mostly-prosaic exterior


which almost completely manages to hide what's going on inside


i fully expect to drive by in a couple months and see this building torn down and replaced by something far more profitable-per-square-foot; the romantic in me hopes not.

[apologies for not bothering to link--it's an easy google if you're really interested]

Sunday, December 20, 2009

a black day in guttermoralityland

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i'd always figured the spammers would pay no more attention to this little blog than has most everybody else; sadly, i was wrong.

apologies, commenters, for the new red tape.

Friday, December 18, 2009

the angry blogger, part 3

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[part 2 to come--sorry, i'm feeling a little tarantino-ish.]

you know that old, hackneyed serenity prayer the alkies cling to--the one that importunes god for the ability to accept that which one can't change, the balls to change that which is in one's power to effect, and the smarts to know which is which?

well, if i were suddenly granted three wishes by the universe, that would damn sure be one of 'em.

from as far back as i can remember i have railed endlessly and impotently against all the idiots out there, since that's easier than facing down the idiot in here

[which self-awareness puts me at least a half-step ahead of all those other angry bloggers, right?].

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

gobble gobble

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when i was a kid growing up in tyler, texas, it was a backwater place basically known for three things: roses, oil money and greenberg's smoked turkeys.

if we were lucky, one of our rich relations would favor us with a greenberg turkey at christmas, and when that happened i can't tell you how special it was because there are few things in this world my family loves as much, but in those lean days we would've never dreamed of splurging on such a luxury for ourselves.

in the ensuing years--especially since oprah named them one of her favorite things a few years back--greenberg's has gone from regional delicacy to coast-to-coast phenomenon, and deservedly so. i'm tellin ya, if you haven't had one, you haven't lived.

these last several years, i've always made sure one of these glorious birds preceded my arrival at my mom's house by a day or so, so as to be perfectly thawed in time for christmas dinner.

well, today it suddenly occurred to me that i'd forgotten to go online and order this year's turkey, so in a last-minute panic i called greenberg's from my car, prepared for the inevitable disappointment.

to my surprise, the phone was answered on the first ring by a live person [and no indian accent, either--that familiar east texas twang washed over me like warm bathwater].

i explained the problem, she pulled up my record immediately. "got it, hon--same order, same address?"

i said yeah, started fumbling for a credit card, asked if she could wait til i pulled over. she said, "aw, don't worry bout that--when the bill comes jest send us a check, and yew and your family have a merry christmas!"

i miss east texas sometimes.

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

quote of the effin' decade

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last week, the president sat down with steve kroft for his third (i think) snow job appearance on 60 minutes since his election. among many extraordinary utterances, this is the one that most made me wanna throw shit at the tv:

"I did not run for office to be helping out a bunch of fat cat bankers on Wall Street."

oh, really, mr. president?

[believe it or not, there was a time when i might've actually bought that statement--last year before the election, as much as i thought [hell, knew] how wrong this guy was for the job, i at least held out the hope that if elected, his ultra-liberal ass would be compelled to throw the corrupt money-changers outta the temple.

ha--even i can be a pollyanna sometimes; i managed to forget for a minute that, no matter which side of the aisle a politician's on, it's first, last and always about the money.]

rather than the pretty words our president says, let's look instead at what he's done, shall we?

i could lay it out for you--hell, my jaw's been on the floor since he named tim geithner as his treasury secretary--but matt taibbi's done a far better job of documenting the whole ugly mess than i ever could, so read him instead. and i mean, every word.

i tell you, when disillusioned liberals start writing pieces like this, you know it's getting pretty bad.

Thursday, December 10, 2009

another productive day at the office

. when i started here, there were sixteen people in my department. today we're down to three, we're the cream of what had already been a select crop, and we're a pretty tight bunch. three nights a week, our schedules coincide in such a way that allows us a long, leisurely dinner together. 

while we're all interesting people with creative backgrounds and our conversations tend to range over a wide variety of subjects, our perennial focus seems to be [and always has been] food, which we talk about incessantly. first, we cover what each person has brought to the table that night--where we got it, what's in it, what we paid for it and/or how we made it, if it's as good as it was last time. then we talk about what we've eaten since last we saw each other, and then, often as not, we talk about our favorite dishes past and present, with excruciating attention paid to every detail of how each is prepared. 

seriously, we never tire of this shit. 

well, one night not long ago i went off on velveeta/ro-tel queso, about how it had once been a staple of my texas youth and how much i missed it. to my amazement, neither of my colleagues had ever experienced the bliss that is this simple dish, nor could they understand how an ungodly combination of canned tomatoes and an engineered cheese product with a millenial shelf-life could even be edible, much less addictive--i said "don't knock it 'til you've tried it." 

next day sue walked in, dumped the following grocery-sack full of ingredients into my lap and said, "let's do it." and thus white-trash fridays were born. 

sadly, i was too busy gorging myself that particular friday to take pictures of the finished product, but it looked very much like this: it always does--seriously, microwave or stove-top, you can't fuck this stuff up, and i've never met anybody, no matter how high-brow, who didn't love it [this now includes my two colleagues]. 

next white-trash friday, we went with a favorite culinary ensemble from my college days: carl buddig lunch-meat sandwiches on pillowy white bread with cheddar-american cheese, mayo, iceberg lettuce and tomato, lipton california onion dip and ruffles potato chips, as lovingly pictured below: lemme tellya, just buying all this shit was an adventure--i found myself in aisles of the supermarket i hadn't walked in years, but it was totally worth it. and fuck the preservatives--it was a most excellent and gratifying meal. 

which brings us to tonight (yeah, it's only thursday, but it was john's birthday so we made an exception). john's menu was very specific, and straight from his childhood: oscar mayer turkey-bologna sandwiches on wonder bread [and only wonder bread would do--he was like a dog with a bone on the subject], best foods mayo, kraft macaroni-and-cheese with a can of hormel turkey chili thrown in, all accompanied by hawaiian punch. oh, and sara lee pound cake and reddi-whip for dessert. 

i ask you, does it get any more white-trash than this? 

sue volunteered to pick it all up, but called me on the way in and asked, "what about the card?"

i told her i'd take care of it. 

i googled, found the images i wanted, realized that since i was without my laptop i was gonna have to do this without the benefit of photoshop or illustrator, sighed and opened the infernal microsoft word on my office desktop, prepared myself for the inevitable struggle. the front was easy enough: but the inside? fuck--after struggling for an hour trying to get text and pictures to play nice together in word, i finally wised up and did it in powerpoint: turns out the biggest problem involved my dyslexic ass trying to figure out how to turn the paper for each pass through the color laser printer in order to get the sonofabitch to come out right--eventually i succeeded. 

 then a stop downstairs in the copy-room at the paper-cutter, swing by the mailroom for the appropriately-sized envelope, and we're done:

[and thank you, shitty iphone, for these quality photos]

 

oh, and the food: tomorrow i may take a serious shot at doing some actual work.

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

i couldn't have said it better (assuming i wasn't so internet-numbed that i still had the attention span necessary to form such thoughts, of course)

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on may 7, 2006, harper lee wrote a letter to oprah winfrey (published in O in July 2006), in which she wrote about her love of books as a child and her dedication to the written word:

Now, 75 years later in an abundant society where people have laptops, cell phones, iPods and minds like empty rooms, I still plod along with books.

Monday, December 7, 2009

if this headline doesn't say it all, then i don't know what ever will

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do you get it yet, people?

when the overlords piously bloviate about how all the developed countries of the world must come together, surrender their autonomy to the united nations climate police and destroy what shreds of their economies and standards of living still remain for the sake of some half-assed, bogus science experiment gone wrong, they're only talking about you, the little people.

the architects of this massive fraud will, of course, be exempt from such strictures and be free to continue to rake in millions on their carbon-offset scams and public-speaking engagements, collect their awards and trot the globe in their gulfstreams preaching the virtue of sacrifice.

and yeah, i'm talkin about you, you fat fuck.

Saturday, December 5, 2009

the angry blogger




it came to my attention recently [maybe we'll get into how at some unspecified future date] that not only do i positively marinate in negativity each and every day, all day long, i fuckin' thrive on it--even as it's taking its toll.

in retrospect, it seems almost ridiculous that something this obvious hadn't fully occurred to me--i mean, me, mr. self-aware--before, but we all have our blind spots, and i guess this was one of mine.

then i sat back and started counting the ways:

1. the market

first thing in my morning (after waking up mad about having to get up in the first goddam place), i flip on CNBC so i can rail at (a) the idiots who have brought us to the brink of financial collapse, and (b) all the other idiots who, in the face of this looming catastrophe, keep running up the market against all reason and thus blowing the bubble even bigger.

2. the news

next, i settle into my eames throne, open the macbook and hit the news sites--always starting, of course, with the incendiary drudge report--in order to learn what latest outrage the corrupt, idiot politicians have perpetrated upon us while we all slept in order to feather their own nests and fuck us up even further [and if i'm really lucky there'll be a good mass murder or world-government conspiracy or something to really get me going].

3. the blogs

ah, my cherished blogs. first, i make my daily rounds of the left so i can sneer at the liberals for being the self-righteous, deluded idiots they generally are, and then i go to over to the conservatives in order to sneer at them for being equal-but-opposite idiots.

then, the pump properly primed, it's time for that most sure-fire, anger-inducing of activities in which i indulge on any given day:

4. the drive to work

which topic will require a post in itself.

Sunday, November 29, 2009

mkf attends a hollywood party

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so the other day i'm online reading a vanity fair article about an old-hollywood architect by the name of john woolf a friend had sent me--a truly fascinating story which explains, among other things, why you see mansard roofs all over america these days--when i unexpectedly come across the following picture of one of this guy's creations and realize i've been there.


* * * * *

one night back in the mid-nineties, i got a phone call from my friend and former roommate dumb-doug [a name used to differentiate him from the other, blonder doug in our circle, the aptly named fun-doug, but that's another story for another day], asking me if i wanted to go to a party.

"you know i don't go to parties."

"it's at bob evans' house."

"i'll be ready in ten minutes."

backstory: at the time, dumb-doug [who in reality was more clueless than dumb, and has since gone on to write at least one successful off-broadway play (and maybe more--i haven't kept track)] was a lawyer working as in-house counsel for a publishing house that specialized in cheesy, celebrity-driven content.

its founder, a flamboyant, hard-driving impresario who, along with his beautiful former-actress wife, had started the company in their garage and built it into a publishing powerhouse, happened to be good friends with mr. evans--and on this particular night, said legendary hollywood producer of such epics as rosemary's baby, love story, the godfather and chinatown had decided (for a reason that escapes me now) to throw a party at his legendary estate in honor of said publisher.

and dumb-doug had to make an appearance and needed a semi-respectable date, which is where i came in.

as we drove [wasn't far--turns out bob and i are homies], doug filled me in on some background which would add a surreal layer of machiavellian intrigue to an evening that really didn't need any embellishment: seems that less than a week after tonight's party honoring doug's boss, doug's boss was gonna turn around and release a salacious tell-all book written by a bunch of former high-priced hookers which would trash the reputations of, among many other hollywood luminaries, the very guy who was throwing the party in his honor.

the fact that i would be one of only four people at the party in possession of this juicy little tidbit made it even sweeter--or so i thought at the time.

my impressions of that night? unfortunately, my memory being what it is [and seeing as how back then i guzzled everything that was handed to me], recollections are spotty, but here are the stand-outs:

warren beatty. in a drab gray windbreaker, who, as soon as we walked in the door and he figured out who doug was, dragged him off my arm and into a corner, where he grilled him relentlessly for half an hour in an effort to figure out how badly he was gonna come off in the forthcoming tell-all book [as it turned out, not bad at all]. as i watched their intense interchange from across the room, all i remember is how small and insubstantial the man came across in real life.

left to my own devices, i wandered, drink in hand, through this wonderland of celebrity as if i owned the place, inserting myself into this group and that, devoid of any sense of intimidation or fear (one of the few advantages of being schizoid).

deborah raffin. this was my first up-close-and-personal experience with the sorta self-discipline combined with expert preservation of the highest order in which hollywood excels. while she had to be in her mid-forties on this particular night, she didn't look a day older than when she'd appeared in the last convertible fifteen years earlier. i told her she looked untouched, and she smiled.

chazz palminteri. while he'd never particularly grabbed me on the big screen, in person (and in stark contrast to mr. beatty), he was this big, smiling, larger-than-life and indescribably magnetic personality who, when he laughed at something i said, put his arm around my shoulder and gave me a rough shake, left me with tingles in places i didn't even know i had.

bob evans and the aforementioned publisher. watching these two arm in arm and smiling--knowing, even if mr. evans did not, that they'd be at each other's throats before the week was out--was interesting, to say the least.

there were lots of other minor celebrities and behind-the-scenes power players--a houseful, in fact--but i can't for the life of me remember 'em (only wish i'd been writing shit down back then, because this story would be so much better).

truth is, i coulda given a rat's ass about most of the people there that night, because as soon as i walked through the gates of woodland (named for one of its bordering streets), i was completely entranced by my surroundings, forgot almost everything else, and could totally understand why mr. evans had sold his soul for the place. small by hollywood-mogul standards, this little masterpiece had an impact far beyond its relatively modest size.

once i managed to drag dumb-doug away from warren's clutches, he and i explored each exquisitely-proportioned room of this magical house, and then wandered the grounds--down the steps and around the oval pool with its fountains to the cabana on the far side [which, since the above picture was taken had been transformed into the screening room in which jack nicholson swears he hasn't he hasn't been laid properly since it burned down], and onto the tennis court beyond.

once we'd had our fill of the outside, we walked back up to the house, gave our thanks to mr. evans [who politely thanked us for coming--he was wearing blue-tinted granny glasses that night, as i recall], and reluctantly took our leave.

damn, i wish there had been little digital cameras back then.

[alternatively, i wish i'd thought to take some screenshots of woodland before i dropped the kid stays in the picture into the mail after v and i just watched it--rent it if you wanna know.]

Sunday, November 22, 2009

so where were you?

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like everybody else, i remember exactly where i was when i heard the news: on the school bus, coming home from first grade on a sunny thursday in houston. we were especially raucous that day--only reason i remember this is because, after our bus driver stood up, turned to face us, asked for quiet and told us what had just happened up in dallas, the utter silence the rest of the ride home was deafening.

i remember the bleak stillness up and down birdwood road as i got off the bus and trudged home that day--the street was completely devoid of life. i remember my mother sitting open-mouthed and silent in front of the television when i walked in the door.

as that grim, black-&-white weekend played itself out, three things made an indelible impression on my young psyche: (1) the tv on continuously, with that flag-draped coffin the centerpiece of almost every shot; (2) my mother's sudden cries of "oh my god, they shot him!" as the assassination of the assassin unfolded before her very eyes; and (3) every neighbor who had casually and robustly wished for the downfall of the king being struck dumb with horror when it actually happened.

and to this day--as cynical as i am, and knowing all that i now know about the dark side of camelot--whenever i look up and realize november 22 has rolled around again, it all comes back in a flash.

Saturday, November 21, 2009

the whole KSM thing

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while most of the country is scratching their heads trying to figure out the twisted rationale behind the obama administration's decision to forego a military tribunal and try the architect of 9/11 in federal court in new york, to me it was merely another example of how tragically in-over-his-head our young and untried president is.

and as further elements of the story emerge--such as how khalid sheikh mohammed was willing to plead guilty and accept the death penalty without trial at guantanamo--it just gets crazier and crazier.

if you haven't seen the following clip in which senate judiciary committee member lindsay graham (never one of my favorites--until now anyway) questions eric holder on the wisdom of this decision, you need to. the good senator starts out easy, lulls our attorney general into a sense of complacency, sets him up--and then, around 1:50, moves in for the kill.



patrick leahy comes in afterwards and attempts to mitigate the fiasco by blathering about guantanamo for a couple minutes, but the damage is done.

as the foregoing makes painfully clear, holder is not only outta his league, he and his boss haven't even made a half-ass effort at thinking this decision through--not only in terms of the instant case, but as to the precedent it would set should, for instance, osama bin laden be caught. this would be funny as hell if it wasn't so deadly serious.

a couple other senators had some good questions, too:


senator herb kohl (a democrat, btw):
In the worst case scenario and the trial does not result in conviction,
what would be your next steps?

eric holder:
Failure is not an option.

sen. chuck grassley takes a go:
I don’t see how you can say that failure is not an option when you’ve got juries in this country.

holder:
If -- if there were the possibility that a trial were not successful, that would not mean that the person would be released into our country.


wait a minute--what happened to the presumption of innocence until guilt is proven? wouldn't pre-trial statements like this by the prosecution be considered wildly prejudicial? i'll bet KSM's attorneys will think so.

and what all about all the evidence gathered via waterboarding and absent the administration of miranda--isn't that all fruit from a very poisoned tree?

and it's not just holder--his boss the president said something similar to NBC when asked about those who might find KSM's receiving the rights of a US citizen offensive:
I don't think it will be offensive at all when he's convicted and when the death penalty is applied to him.

really, mr. president? a foregone conclusion already?

holder even got his own "i'm the decider" moment.

senator john kyl:
You have repeatedly said that your decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in Article III courts is because that is where you have the best chance to prosecute… How could you be more likely to get a conviction in federal court when Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has already asked to plead guilty before military commission and be executed?

holder:
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is not making this decision. The attorney general of the United States is making this decision.


yeah, and thanks for that one, eric.

why are they doing this? while i have my own theories, here are the reasons the obama administration is spouting in defense of this most boneheaded of decisions:

1. they wanna show the world how "open" and "transparent" our justice system is.

yeah, and all their "he's gonna go down for sure, and if he doesn't, we'll just re-arrest him on other charges so that he never goes free" statements do nothing but reinforce that idea.

2. they wanna show the world that we're "not afraid" to try him in a civilian court.

of course we're not--as long as we have tens of millions of dollars' worth of police and military personnel and firepower paralyzing the city of new york for weeks in order to provide "security" while this farce runs its course.

and the clear message to the world? well, think about it: can you imagine any one westerner whose presence in even the humblest, most backward middle-eastern country could stir up this much shit? yet here we are, the mightiest nation on earth, preparing to call out half the army to protect us in our own country against possible fallout from KSM's fan base when we "try" him.

my prediction is, this show trial will prove to be the greatest propaganda tool radical islam has ever had--even at my most creative, i can't imagine a better way to give aid and comfort to the enemy.

oh, and one other question, mr. failure-is-not-an-option: what is your politically-correct, diversity-loving ass gonna do about the muslims in the jury pool who swear with shifty eyes that they can be impartial?

this is gonna be rich.

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

a guttermorality news round-up

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since documenting the details of the day-to-day march of western civilization towards the abyss has become just too exhaustingly painful for yours truly to rail about on a regular basis, i've decided to do it in big batches at random periodic intervals [i.e., like tonight].


from the guttermorality health-and-science desk:













global warming climate change.


the most inconvenient truth i've come across in awhile was a quote in a recent short-but-sweet article by BBC climate correspondent paul hudson, as follows:
For the last 11 years, we have not observed any increase in global temperatures. And our climate models did not forecast it, even though manmade carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise.
[emphasis mine]

heretic? of course he is, and he has been roundly condemned as such by the faithful.

because, make no mistake about it: the global-warming cult is every bit as much a religion--with all its high priests, dogma and trappings--as any of the more traditional religions at which most of its secular adherents would sneer.

and i'm talking not only in its dubious basis in fact, but in its desire for world domination.

be dubious, my children--be very dubious.


from the guttermorality national-affairs desk:















the fort hood shooting.


wow, just look at how far america's come.

back at the outbreak of world war II [i.e., the last war we won], the civil rights of thousands of loyal japanese-american citizens were, without much thought or debate, thrown out the window for what almost nobody at the time even questioned was a more important ideal; i.e., the security of the united states of america.

today, a scant 67 years later? hell, we'll happily lay back, spread our legs, compromise our military and our borders and sacrifice the lives of at least 13 of our soldiers, because god knows a minor abstraction like national security is far less important than the all-important goal of not offending our enemies.

has the pendulum swung from one dangerous extreme to the other? what the fuck [assuming you have a rational, functioning brain] do you think?


from the guttermorality world-affairs desk:












the obama bow.


watching this guy veer wildly between snotty aloofness and kiss-ass obsequiousness when he meets with world leaders is kinda like watching oprah back during that period when she was alternately fat and thin--you just never know which one you're gonna get when you flip on the tv.


from the guttermorality political desk:









2012.


the next presidential election will be the republicans' to lose, and it'll probably be the last time they'll ever have a real shot at the white house.

with this in mind, is the gop rallying behind the traditional conservative values of fiscal responsibility, limited government and secularity in order to seek the kind of candidate that will unite and inspire the core of america for what will probably be the most important presidential election of my lifetime?

oh, hell no--they're pandering to the same fools-for-jesus constituency whose collective ignorant, know-nothing ass they've been kissing ever since said crowd proved to be such useful idiots in the reagan years.

so it looks like my choice in 2012 is shaping up to be (a) more of the same; or (b) some unholy combination of palin/pawlenty/jindal/bachmann/huckabee.

i may well opt for (3) costa rica [and don't think i'm kidding].


from the guttermorality financial desk:











hey, even a broken drunk's right twice a day--i can only hope at least a couple of you paid attention to me way back when.

Monday, November 16, 2009

movie night

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[during which mkf not only socializes with actual people, but even has actual fun.]

after almost two years in the making, (a) the planets aligned, (b) the schedules coincided, (c) our host finally dragged his lazy ass to costco and bought the requisite big-ass flat-screen, and (d) mkf was only an hour late picking up v--i.e., it finally happened:

movie night.

the theme had been planned long before by our host, john, and myself: a double-feature of cheesy-yet-excellent post-"baby jane" thrillers--and everybody brought their favorite dish.

we chose to lead with a classic from bette (and bette):


followed as inevitably as night follows day by the immortal miss crawford's


trust me, an inspired pairing if ever there was one.

problem was, by the time we finished with drinks and dinner (which were incomparably excellent, as the following snapshot should attest)


we only managed to make it through the first film (which was a rousing success, of course) before reluctantly calling it a night and promising a raincheck for the second.

hey--suddenly, a reason to live.

Saturday, November 14, 2009

would you drop your pants for this guy?

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no? then obviously you're not straight.

while i thank whatever god there might be that my personal interest in unavailable straight guys lasted only for about as long as it took me to figure out there were all kinds of perfectly-acceptable homogays out there who were more than happy to get naked with me, that fact in no way discounts--as has been mentioned previously--my fascination with the intricate machinations employed by shlubs like jeffrey graybill in order to get into the pants of clueless straight guys.

this guy's shtick? he'd post ads on craigslist posing as a fertility doctor looking for sperm donors and offering the lucky recipients $4,000 for their goods if they met his rigorous standards. needless to say, he found lots of willing idiots--as many as 40, they think--before he got caught.

my favorite quote from the various news sources i've perused concerning this story would be the following:

He would collect semen, urine and blood samples from victims before touching the men inappropriately during hernia and testicular examinations, according to police.

i mean, jesus god--how many stupid straight guys are out there, anyway?

[never mind--total rhetorical question]

Friday, November 13, 2009

it's not just me, right?

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back in college, i read, and was completely creeped out by, stephen king's pet sematary.

if you haven't read it, its basic premise was: if you lost someone dear and the loss was too great to bear, you could inter your loved one's dead body in a very special burial ground once reserved for pets, and they'd come back to life, and back to you--problem was, what came back was only nominally similar to what had lived before; it was the differences that were horrifying.

these days, and due to the fact that it's my 'hood, i spend a lot of time in the pet sematary otherwise known as beverly hills, and just walking to the drugstore or the dry-cleaners i see countless examples resembling the pic above--rich women with great bone structure who have decided that the horrifingly-artificial semblance of youth is preferable to reality.

today, i took a mental-health day--called in sick, slept in late and ran some errands around my little village. perhaps my poor, overworked retinas were exposed to one too many sad exemplars of the above, or maybe i just had one too many tonight.

whatever--this one's going in before i stagger off to bed.

[apologies to victoria, even though she totally deserves it]

Sunday, November 8, 2009

let's try this again

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[this was supposed to have been last weekend's post, and for a minute it was--until i dragged my ass outta bed the next morning, saw the horrific left turn it had somehow taken the night before and yanked it immediately.

maybe one of these days i'll learn: write drunk, publish sober.]

six oldsmobiles and a chevy




one of the great things about maintaining a blog is that random shit like this--a sudden urge to scour the internet for pictures of every car my family owned while i was growing up--becomes a concrete, frozen memory for all the world (or at least, all eleven of my readers) to see.

as is often the case, what started out as a simple, straightforward pictorial has turned into yet another lengthy, anecdote-filled tale from my past--feel free to skip all the prose and just look at the pictures.




i must admit, i've been brooding about the sad, sorry demise of general motors [because make no mistake, that's what it was] ever since it happened--for me, it truly was the end of an era.

see, i grew up in a time in america when there were only three tv networks and three car companies--namely, GM, ford and chrysler--of any real consequence. while a family might be permitted to promiscuously flip from NBC to CBS to ABC on their televisions, cars were different--folks back then tended to pick a brand and stick with it through thick and thin.

our family? we were GM people--more particular to my branch of the tree (i.e., the ones who couldn't afford cadillacs), we were oldsmobile people, goddammit.

the following is the first car of which i have any recollection:

1. 1956 oldsmobile holiday 88 sedan



ours wasn't anywhere near this fun; it was solid white on the outside, but even more red in its interior than the above--more [in fact, exactly] like this:


can you youngsters of today even imagine riding around in a car like this?

long before seatbelts and car-seats shackled the weak impulses of the meek, cowed, ritalin-drugged youth of today, my little brother and i would bounce wildly from front-seat to back in our holiday 88's vast interior, beating each other senseless and screeching maniacally as our mother careened down the road, all windows open in the stifling houston heat, cigarette in one hand whilst screaming and slapping around behind her in a vain attempt to control us with the other.

god, those were the days.


2. 1964 oldsmobile jetstar 88 sedan

our family's first new car.


once again, ours wasn't anywhere near this fun--it wasn't red, and it never ventured anywhere near the slopes.

in fact, its first iteration (so i'm told) was a dark, drab green--my father, having traded in the holiday 88 and picked out our new car without consulting my mother [he had a tendency to do unilateral shit like that], was apparently totally unprepared for her tearful reaction to his nice surprise.

by the time i got home from school that day--i remember it was cold and raining, and kennedy was freshly dead--a neighbor had been dragged in to watch my brother and sister, and my parents were on their way back to the dealership to pick out something my mother could live with. i sat there in front of the tv, literally beside myself with excitement at the prospect of a new car, and counted the minutes until they got back.

i still remember hearing them pull into the driveway, dashing to the back door and flinging it open to watch as our shiny new car, droplets of rain beading across its sleek, sky-blue hood, rolled into the garage.

it looked exactly like this (only much more shiny):


they piled us all into the car, and we went for a ride. it was a miracle machine--i mean, you pushed a button on the dash and ice-cold air emerged, for chrissakes--who'd've ever thought? and my mother could move the thing from lane to lane with a finger, such was the magic of power steering--and the heady new-car smell emerging from its plastic royal-blue interior i remember to this day, but can't even begin to describe.

and, like its predecessor--in fact, like all full-sized GM cars of that era--it was big and powerful and fast: stomp on the gas, and that big v-8 would lay you back in your seat as it leapt forward to claim the road.

ultimately, the jetstar would prove no more durable than the life we thought would go on forever--by late 1970 we were fatherless, near-penniless and sorely in need of a new car.

enter the deus ex machina known around our house as uncle don.

3. 1969 oldsmobile cutlass supreme holiday coupe



that sweet little cutlass--i remember it well.

don drove it down one night, told us it was ours [it had been his company car--he'd bought out the lease so his dead brother's widow would have a decent car to drive], swapped his keys for ours, gave my mom a hug and immediately headed back north to tulsa in the by-then decrepit jetstar (which would overheat twice before he managed to make it home) because he had to work the next day.

incomparably beautiful, our new car was a sleek, glistening, metallic tobacco brown, looking like it had been built for nothing but speed. after don left, we walked around it a few times, just gawking.

my recollections of that first drive (cross-town, to pick up my little sister at her dance class): it was dusk, a light rain was falling, the wipers and air were on low, the rich brown interior was redolent of don's cigars, neil diamond's "cracklin' rosie" was playing softly on the radio, and at every red light to which we smoothly rolled to a stop, my mother and i just looked at each other and shook our heads in disbelief at how goddam lucky we were.

needless to say, we loved that car.

and it served us nobly and well and with great style until, newly-minted driver's license in hand, yours truly managed to single-handedly deliver the one-two punches that finished it off.


4. 1971 oldsmobile custom cruiser station wagon



[i decided fore-and-aft pictures of this monstrosity were necessary in order to attempt to convey an accurate impression of its sheer size.]

practically the only person who was happy about the cutlass's premature demise was my uncle don's wife, pat--it gave her the perfect excuse to pawn the big green albatross she'd been dying to get rid of onto us.

dubbed "the titanic" by my mother immediately upon delivery, it remains to this day the largest, heaviest, most ponderously unnavigable non-commercial vehicle i've ever driven.

and by "driven," what i really mean is, you gripped the wheel of this cushy, softly-sprung motherfucker, squared your shoulders, sighted across the length of its vast hood, aimed it in the general direction you wanted it to go, hit the gas and hoped for the best--seriously, on the best of days, driving this thing was like navigating a ship on the high seas.

and fuel economy? yeah--you could push the pedal, hear that mighty 455 v-8 roar and literally watch the needle drop towards "e" before it ever started to move.

i used it a couple times for booze runs, though--boy, did it load up nice. the suspension, such as it was, was never quite the same afterwards.

and then there was the time a dozen of my closest friends and i accidentally backed her into the lake with the tailgate down--the electrical system, such as it was, was never quite the same afterwards.

my most enduring memory of this car: my mother grabbing the keys whenever she walked out the door, sighing and saying to no one in particular, "i sure miss my little cutlass."

salvation would come two years later with the arrival of the ringer in this humble little post.


1973 chevrolet caprice classic


by this time, uncle don had graduated from being a vice-president buying out leases on cars owned by his employer to being the employer buying out leases on his own vice-presidents' cars, which is how ma got the caprice.

and even though it delivered her from the titanic, my mother hated this car from day one (i think for no other reason than because it was black-on-black, and god knows she had a history of distaste for dark-colored cars).

i, on the other hand, loved it--it was big and elegant and smooth and powerful, and as soon as i drove it i swapped her immediately for my new lipstick-red '76 malibu classic, and everybody was happy.

this state of affairs would continue for a year or so, until something unexpected and marvelous happened.


5. 1976 oldsmobile delta 88 royale coupe


'big red,' we called her--she was a total fluke.

what happened was, a vice-president in don's company to whom pat [with whom you really didn't wanna fuck] had taken a particular dislike chose to prove her instincts correct by abruptly quitting and cashing in his stock options--don made all his people shitloads of money, and they mostly crapped on him in return--at a most inopportune time.

[said vp had good taste in cars, though, and had spent a lot of time carefully factory-ordering this one. my aunt pat, upon seeing it for the first time, decided it would be perfect for my mother.]

when said vp walked into my uncle's office to pick up his final check, don's secretary, barbara, told him to leave the keys to his car on her desk.

when he protested--don always let his departing executives take their cars--barbara flatly reiterated, "don said to leave your keys."

the vp in question slammed the keys down on her desk, snatched his final paycheck outta her hand and stalked out.

don, of course, knew nothing about any of this--all he knew was, his most-recently departed vp had for some inexplicable reason left the keys to his gorgeous, practically-new company car behind, thus providing a new car for...guess who?

pat, laughing, called my mother, filled her in on her machiavellian machinations and said, "act surprised when he calls you with the good news, ok?"

don flew her up to pick up the car, which was firemist red with a white vinyl top and whorehouse-velour interior [identical to the above, minus the pimped-out wheelz]--my mother finally had the car of her dreams.

she called me as soon as she got home: "honey, i thanked everybody, climbed behind the wheel of that thing, stopped at the first 7-11 i came across, bought two packs of cigarettes, a big coke with lots of ice and the eight-track of saturday night fever, cranked up the volume, thanked god for all that was good and holy and boogied all the way home."

god, she loved that car--and so did i.

see, at 21, having been born, bred and fully-acclimated to the marque, i had come to the belief that (a) there was nothing in this world to compare with the sheer majesty and power of a full-size, liberally-optioned general motors automobile; and (b) this particular car exemplified all that was and had ever been good about GM.

here's the only picture i have of big red [she was mine by the time this was taken], parked next to my brother's graduation-present jeep in the lot of the adjacent uncle-don-supplied condos he and i enjoyed whilst attending college on (you guessed it) uncle don's nickel--god, we were so insufferably spoiled, but that's a post for another day.


[in case you're wondering, this picture was taken not because of the car, but because it was a rare snow day in austin.]

all of the foregoing is what makes the final installment of this post so sadly paradoxical, because after '76, it was all downhill for GM--that's when the downsizing began.

and i'm not just talking mass--i'm talking vision.


6. 1982 oldsmobile cutlass supreme coupe


christmas, 1981--gathered together in tulsa, we watched as my mother opened the box containing the keys to the first truly-new car she had owned since that long-ago day when she and my father had rolled into our garage in the jetstar 88.

and, as always, don and pat meant well--it wasn't their fault that the new car they offered up to my mother was but a pale, scaled-down imitation of the mighty oldsmobiles that had come before it.

i mean, look at that sad, pitiful, downsized, impersonal piece of corporately-designed shit up there, and imagine having to reluctantly climb into its diminished quarters after having spent four glorious years in #5 above, not to mention all the full-bodied cars that had come before it--and trust me, the thing was as cheap, tinny, ungainly and underpowered as it looks.

my mother handled the transition graciously, of course--and, much to my delight, i ended up with big red for the remainder of my college career.

[what ultimately happened to big red, you ask? she and i ended up participating in a t-bone collision (refreshingly, not my fault) from which we both rolled away relatively unscathed, whilst our opponents--a drunk and his flimsy post-1976 GM piece-of-shit--were (a) badly shaken up, and (b) totaled, respectively.]

of course, several cars have occupied my mother's driveway since, but not a single one has come close to being as distinctive or memorable as even the least of the foregoing.

R.I.P., GM--you will be missed.

Saturday, November 7, 2009

from serious politics to dancing penises

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because that's the way we roll here.




h/t jezebel

Thursday, November 5, 2009

a guttermorality political endorsement

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i just did something i swore i'd never do: i donated money to a political campaign.

mr. schiff has been featured on these pages before--i've been following him for a long time.

this is my kinda republican--he doesn't give a damn about such sideshows as abortion or gay marriage; he's got his eye on the only ball that matters right now: the financial future of the united states of america.

and speaking more broadly, he's also my kinda politician--a successful, self-made entrepreneur who came to politics only after having established his credibility out in the real world, and who is just as even-handedly critical of republican policies (and politicians) as he is of democrats'.

and the icing on the cake? he's going up against one of the chief architects of the financial catastrophe in which we we find ourselves today: that most bloated, corrupt and infinitely inept of all political hacks, christopher dodd.

schiff clearly saw--and has spent the last ten years warning the world about--everything that dodd was so obviously blind to. ridiculed for years as "dr. doom," schiff's critics have all pretty much shut up, as everything he predicted has pretty much come to pass.

and his followers? they're a passionate bunch, to say the least. from its humble beginnings as a grassroots "draft schiff" movement barely a year ago, his campaign has raised over $1.1 million, most of it from out-of-state donors--and far more than has the tainted mr. dodd.

how will this race play out? i think it's gonna be fascinating to watch. first, to see how he does against the various party hacks the republican establishment--who hate schiff and see him as a huge threat to their status quo--run against him in the primary; second, to see how the connecticut electorate take to his message; third, to see how his candidacy resonates nationally; and, finally, the reaction of the dodd camp to this, the most formidable threat they've seen in 30 years.

i, for one, will be following it closely.

if you'd like to get a sense of the man for yourself--or if you just want a quick primer on how we got to the sad, sorry place we are today, and where we're headed if things don't change--i urge you to watch the following clip featuring most of his very first campaign speech, given yesterday in hartford. trust me, there's no empty political rhetoric here:




[and now that he's gotten the stamp of approval from this bastion of respectability--seriously, what could possibly stop him?]