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Scooby Doo in the House

At a recent meeting of Republican fundraisers, someone foolishly left a copy of their manual in the hotel.  It didn’t really contain any surprises, to those of us who are cynical enough to think that the Republicans are pure evil.

For the rest of the world, it may come as an eye opener.  For the small donors, who may give 10, 20 or 50 dollars, the idea is to use fear.  Yes, they actually said that, right there in the manual.  The small donor can be motivated by fear.  Fear and extreme hatred of the curren administration.  Fear of America trending towards socialism.

They included a graphic which, seen by anybody except a Republican, looks totally ridiculous.  Obama as the joker.  Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi as the “American Gothic” couple.  Nancy Pelosi as Cruella De Vil and Harry Reid as Scooby Doo.

Ridiculous on many levels.  What does the joker have to do with socialism?  What is the point about portraying Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi in front of a barn, with Harry holding a pitchfork?  Cruella De Vil, O.K., but do they actually think American voters are afraid of Scooby Doo?  And what could possibly be the connection between a Batman villain, a Grant Wood classic and two cartoons which have nothing to do with each other or politics?  Apparently, however, they think it inspires fear.  It’s entitled “The Evil Empire.”

Big donors, according to the document, can be motivated by ego and access among other things.  Also tchotchkes.

There’s nothing illegal about handing out tchotchkes.  Shops around the world do it.  Everybody gets pens, cups, calendars and balloons.  It’s the idea that world leadership, the historical direction of mankind, the future of our civilization should depend on who hands out the best tchotchkes that offends me.

Also, I think the general public should take note at how directly the Republican party draws the line between their small donors (motivate them with fear) and their large donors (motivate them with access).

Sorry, teabaggers.  No access for you.

Vulcan Death Grip

A little while back, perhaps only a week or two but the political scandals come so quickly any more that it seems like several election cycles, Mitt Romney got into an altercation on an airplane.

According to the statement Romney released, he politely asked the man in front of him to move his seat to the upright position and the man became violent.  I was a bit suspicious of the story from the get go, but the airline did put the other passenger off the plane.

Then the man, rapper Red Foo from the group LMFAO, laid out his side of the story.  He says Romney grabbed his shoulder in a “Vulcan Death Grip.”

Now, both parties have plenty of motivation to  lie.  They both even had good reason to manufacture the incident entirely.

Romney gained points with the public who sympathize with the upright citizen passenger confronted with wild haired hippie of dubious ethnicity, who dealt with the situation (if you’re a Romney believer, you’re a Romney believer) in a calm but masterful manner.  More than that, though, he got it into the newspapers that he was flying in coach.  Mitt Romney, worth somewhere between a quarter and a half a billion dollars, just being a regular guy.  Probably even had a burger at McDonald’s in the terminal.

You would think posturing like that wouldn’t mean much, but when Scott Brown won the senate seat in Romney’s Massachusetts basically on the fact that he drives a truck, politicians took note.

LMFAO, on the other hand, wrote a song about the incident.  After seeing a short preview, it’s clear they have a lot to gain.  Two guys without a great deal of talent, trying hard to be just like every other rapper in the world.  Any publicity they get out of this will be helpful to them.  They could be the next Joe the Plumber, with a record album ready to go, hoping to ride their 15 minutes of fame into a permanent position among the famous and rich.

One thing I haven’t heard much of in this story is the eyewitness accounts from other passengers.  Once upon a time, that would have been the media’s default angle.  Find some people who were on the flight, ask them what they saw, and report it.

I don’t think it should be hard for a good reporter to find them.  I’m sure that right now, as I write this, there are hundreds of people in Boston and Vancouver and several points in between, having conversations in bars, at their kitchen tables, in their office canteen that sound something like this:  “A friend of a friend of my brother’s was sitting right across from them and he said….”

In fact, I’m guessing that major media outlets have had phone calls and e-mails from people who were there, just waiting to be interviewed.

Hasn’t happened.  And I don’t know why.

(p.s. I do not live in North America.  If the coverage was there and I missed it, then never mind)

Silly Animal Poems

Well, the book of the month for March is written.  You can read it.  I hope you do.

I think it will be more popular than February’s book of the month, which you can still read if you like.  Not many people made it all the way through.  My thanks to all those who read it and commented on it.

It will eventually get a re-write and be presented again, but for now the book of the month program is in full swing.  I am quite pleased to say that the poems in this book are not part of the stockpile (except for maybe two or three).  That’s right.  The stockpile.  When I set myself a goal of a book a month, I did so knowing that I had 2 or 3 books already written – a couple of collections of poems and at least one collection of essays.

The fact that the animal poems were outside of that stockpile, were mostly written this year, since January, makes me optimistic about the whole project.

I decided to put together the animal poems book after I read a couple of them at the Alchemy reading in January.  The response was very positive.  Well, there’s nothing that can motivate me more than positive feedback.  A little flattery goes a long way.

Still, though, it’s a conflict for me as a writer.  Everybody likes my short poems, the light comedy stuff, mostly suitable for children but with an occasional off color joke thrown in.  Perhaps it’s just a bit of a break from the non-rhyming poets of rage and confession.  Shorter, anyway.

I, on the other hand, would like to write longer and more serious stuff.

So, expect the book of the month column, as well as my daily blogs, to reflect that dichotomy.  Sometimes funny, sometimes serious.  Feel free to read and interpret however you like.                                     With love,  Willie

I am not a religious or a superstitious person.  I don’t actually believe in ghosts or reincarnation.  Nonetheless, one program we follow obsessively in my family (and I’m the prime instigator) is “Ghost Whisperer.”

Partly it’s because I think Jennifer Love Hewitt is really hot.  For my wife, it is about the extremest level of horror she can handle, but she does get a delicious thrill.  And the stories are simple enough that the kids can understand, and harmless enough that their young minds won’t be seriously traumatized.

It really is a stupid show.  They are living in this typical American “small town” which has a University, quite a large hospital, art galleries, fancy restaurants and can fill an auditorium for a poetry reading or a magic show with no problem.

She tells pretty much everybody that she sees ghosts, and yet it’s still a big secret.

She’s been seeing ghosts since she was a little girl and yet she still gets surprised.

There’s even a ghost dog.

So, it’s a stupid show but I like it.  That’s why I was excited when I watched the trailers, and then the 1^st episode or so, of “The Others.”  Cool idea, I thought.  A group of people with various psychic powers, doing good and fighting evil while trying to live their personal lives and not be freaks in society.

But it falls totally flat.  There’s no Jennifer Love Hewitt.  Marion, the girl from Iowa character, who is obviously supposed to be the JLH parallel, with her ability to see ghosts and whatnot, has a charisma level which hovers at around 0.  Satori, who I suspect is supposed to be Ginger to Marion’s Mary Ann, is not much hotter.  I liked her at first because she, like me, reads the Tarot Cards, but, being a true psychic, she refers to people like me as frauds and charlatans.  The problem’s the same, though.  No charisma.

I also liked, at first, the guy who is a bit nuts and just keeps seeing all sorts of symbolism in everything he sees, license plates, random phrases in advertisements, addresses.  Again, I sort of identified with him and definitely thought of him as the character I would most like to smoke a joint with.  But his craziness is really nothing more than Kramer without the comedy, and it doesn’t go anywhere.  The grumpy old blind guy is a pathetic pain in the ass, the kindly old black man is kind of cool, but how many times can you almost die before everybody says “Enough, die, already.”  The guy who is obviously supposed to be a copy of Professor Payne has an even lower likeability factor than Payne, if that’s possible, and the young doctor just doesn’t display enough emotion for his supposed gift of perfect empathy.

It rather reminds me of when E.R. and Chicago Hope premiered at the same time.  I couldn’t put my finger on why I liked E.R. and didn’t get drawn into Chicago Hope at all.

The situations were almost identical.  They had the same composition to their cast.

But one show had charisma and one didn’t.  That’s the way it goes.

To Drive or Not to Drive, That is the Question

On Friday, Sam was especially excited about going to hockey practice because he’d persuaded his friend’s dad to give us a ride.

This is a bit of an issue in our family.  One of the reasons I moved to Europe is the ubiquitous culture of the automobile, and one of the reasons I like living here is that the public transportation is pretty good.   My wife and I argued for a long time over whether we needed a car or not and then she just went ahead and got one.  I was not happy with that, but it has proved useful on occasion and she loves it, so I just shut up.

In any event, Sam was jazzed.  Also, I must admit that the trip by tram and then bus and then about a 10 minute walk because for some reason, the two gyms where they have football practice are somewhere to the northeast of inconveniently located is, in this European socialist public transportation paradise, a pain in the butt.

So, we got to where we were going in about 15 minutes instead of the hour that it takes.  On the way, the kids and Martin’s dad are talking, in Czech.  I sort of stopped paying attention after awhile.  There was a song on the radio which also elicited mixed emotions in me.  On the one hand, I thought it was a great song.  (I’m sure I’ve heard it before, but I don’t know the name or artist and don’t care that much.  I’m not writing for a music magazine here)  A high-pitched, sweet, Shirley Templish female voice (which sends shivers down my spine) singing “Fuck you, fuck you very, very much.”  At first, I thought I’d misheard.  Surely, she must be singing Thank you very much and in the same way that many viewers misheard Dr. McCoy when he said “Get your Vulcan hands off me!,” I had just misheard this.  But no.  That was the chorus and it was frequently repeated.

So, kind of a cool song and if I’d heard it in a bar I would have thought it was great, but we had 7 year olds in the back seat.  Of course, nobody but me was paying a damned bit of attention to the lyrics and Sam’s the only one who could possibly have understood them anyway.  The irony is that I want him to pay more attention to stuff that’s in English.  He definitely prefers speaking in Czech and his little sister is worse.

I’m not writing in favor of censorship.  It’s just something that threw me for a loop as a parent but which I’m going to have to deal with sooner or later.  There are kids today whose 1^st word is fuck.

Kind of like the car thing.  As much as I don’t like them, they are a big and unavoidable part of our lives.

So, we were going along well, and I was feeling a bit envious since Martin’s dad was obviously, to the kids, the cooler dad, when we got there and he had to find a parking spot.

And, oh, I’m so fucking glad I don’t drive.