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Jay Leno is losing his mojo.  His timing is off, he is muttering, he is blowing his lines.  I didn’t watch the White House Correspondent’s dinner.  The reports that I had from the left (and why should I listen to any other kind) said that he bombed, although I’m sure he got a very polite reception from the crowd.  After all, he’s not Stephen Colbert.

But I watched him the other night when Schwarzenegger was on and it wasn’t pretty.

I don’t hate Jay Leno.  For a long time I referred to him, along with Arnold who stopped being funny when he got elected, as exceptions to the rule that right wingers are never funny (see Dennis Miller,  Victoria Jackson).

I view David Letterman much the same way.  In the beginning, it was ground breaking TV.  No talk show host had ever before covered themselves in Alka-Seltzer and been lowered into a tank.  Now, he’s getting on a bit and those jokes don’t seem as funny any more.

I’m a Conan fan, definitely.  I was totally impressed, during the writers’ strike, how he played guitar and sang to fill in the time.  The man has extreme talent.  Still, he’s been around for years.

I’ve been living outside of the U.S. long enough that I haven’t seen much of the younger guys like Jimmy Kimmel and Craig Ferguson, so I can’t rate them.  No matter.

My point is that a talk show host doesn’t need to stay in their job for 10, 15, 20 years.  Take your millions, retire and give the younger guys a shot.

Comedy has to be fresh, baby.

Things just pile up.  We finally got the  book of the month posted last night –this is actually being written on the 3^rd– but now I am 4 blogdays behind and still need to come up with something more for my  poetry reading tonight and also haven’t even begun passing out this month’s Watson’s World News.  Today is not offering me much respite from the  pressure.

I took Sam to the doctor this morning, just to get the doc to sign a paper saying that Sam hasn’t grown a 2^nd head, because he didn’t examine him more than that, so that Sam can go off to “Nature School” tomorrow.

Now, I don’t really have a good translation for “Nature School” because this, like “Družina” doesn’t exist in the American educational system.  I guess it’s a bit like summer camp, although I never went to one so can’t really compare.

Anyway, it’s a group of kids from school, they will be somewhere out of Prague living in a cottage with a couple of teachers and they have lots of fun activities in addition to their lessons.

Then, I took Sam to school and came home.  I’ve written two of the blogs (counting this piece of filler)gand one sonnet, which I think is not bad, and now it’s time to pick up Isabel from school and then Sam.  At 4 o’clock until 6, we have his football practice during which time I usually go to the playground with Izzy.

Then I come home for an hour and dash down to my monthly poetry reading, without the real zinger which I know is in there waiting, but I never seem to get it written down.

Petřin Hill is a beautiful place.  Legend has it that if you get kissed under a cherry tree there on May 1st, you will have plenty of love and romance in the coming year.  If not, tough luck.

We’ve been there the last couple of years and we observe the tradition, but in the manner of a long married couple rather than young lovers whose passion is fueled by uncertainty and mystery.

The exchange went something like this:

Me: Here?

Her: No, wait.

Me: What?

Her: Those people are sitting right there.

Me: So what?

Her: O.K., but be quick about it.

(quick peck on lips)

Me: O.K., we got that out of the way.

When I first came to Prague, the hillside was sprinkled with saplings, covered with tape and surrounded by wire fences.  Just a parade of sticks, really.  Now, they are real trees, and cherry trees in the springtime are a little bit of extra special beauty.  That is, all trees and flowers represent the miracle of life, the mountains and oceans and lakes and rivers make this a magnificently beautiful world, but the cherry blossoms are a bit of icing on the donut, they are an extra ribbon on the package, especially when they  fall from the trees in an extra gentle pink spring rain.  That’s probably in another week or so.

The night before May 1st is witches‘ night, and that was a blast, but next year I definitely plan to go in costume.  The witches were having the best time, we were just spectators like everybody else.

Both  events had one bad aspect.  Too many people.  At witches night, the kids were upset because they didn’t get to go into the bouncing house, because the line was too long and when we went back they were closed.

At Petřin on May 1^st, it’s just hard to find a nice, private tree.

I don’t keep up with pop music very much.  In my youth, I felt it imperative to know at any given time what songs were in the top ten, the names of key individuals in popular bands, which forms of music were considered cool within my peer group and which were not.

Now, I don’t really care.  However, I still flip over to the music channels when AXN, (pretty much the only channel we get in English with normal, cheesy entertainment for the masses) descends even below my minimal standards and the History Channel is just talking about old stuff.  I seldom bother with the news channels at all because that is what the internet is for.

Any  of them can get repetitive if you watch them too much.  Movie channels repeat shamelessly, The History Channel is obsessed with WWII, about which we know almost everything, and the life of Christ, about which we really know almost nothing, but that doesn’t stop them.  Discovery Channel is always blowing something up, and Animal Planet is always showing the animal version of Cops.

So, a couple of days ago, I was just watching music videos while I browsed the news on the internet, and I got a song stuck in  my head which will not come out.  You all know how that goes.

Anyway, the song is that one where they sing “I’m trying to find the words to describe you without being disrespectful” and then they say “Damn, you’re a sexy chick” about 10 gazillion times.

I once requested Elvis Presley’s “Hound Dog” at Karaoke night, and I was sorry I did.  After you repeat the same thing enough times, it invariably just sounds stupid.

Also, as a writer, it kind of pisses me off.  I search my brain, I sit and ponder, I count syllables, I come up with long, elaborate poems with tight rhyme schemes in which every word makes sense and I’m not repeating myself, and along comes somebody with a stupid, unoriginal line like “Damn, you’re a sexy chick,” puts a good beat behind it and some sexy women in a video, and they are off to the races, raking in the money hand over fist and attending awards ceremonies.

Nonetheless, I had the song stuck in my head all day and this was quite interesting as made my way around town.  The music sort of began to form the background for what I was seeing, a real life video in real time.

Of course, at many points it was a comedy video.  My mind is singing “Damn, you’re a sexy chick” and I see people passing who are old, fat, male or for some other reason most definitely not a sexy chick.

However, there was one stretch, while changing from the Green Line to the Yellow at Mustek, when it worked out beautifully.  There were the two young girls, giggling over something, there is nothing sexier to me than a giggling girl, then the well dressed 30ish brunette, probably worked in an office, maybe having an affair, certainly has offers, then the African girl with enormous breasts and elaborately painted nails, a little on the hefty side perhaps, but damn what a sexy chick.  As the beat kept pounding in my head, the parade of beautiful women seemed never ending.

Then I saw one approaching who was quite slender with wavy, light brown hair and a cute little beret on top of her head and as she approached….OMG she must be 60 years old, and I’m back to the comedy video again.

I’ll bet she was a sexy chick once, though.  Damn, girl.

Murder is always an ugly crime.  Murder inside a family has an added dimension of ugliness to it, because the grieving loved ones of the victim are also the heavily conflicted loved ones of the guilty party or parties.

The most recent case is a couple of boys aged 15 and 12  in Indiana who, with a little help from the neighbor kids, killed their stepfather.  Now, the kids are in a whole heap of trouble, and justifiably so, and the argument is on as to whether or not they should be tried in adult court, which I’ll comment on in a minute but first, I would just like to say that I really feel bad for the mother in this case.   One the one hand, she has known her children, probably, longer than her husband, and almost certainly has a stronger bond with them.

She may remain angry with them forever and write them out of her life, but it would be as hard on her as it is on them.

Now, let’s go back to the whole juvenile v. adult court issue.  Of course they should be tried as juveniles.  They are juveniles.  What is the point of having two separate court systems if you are not going to use them?

The reason given in the article for trying them as adults is that the juvenile court system is not set up to deal with such horrible crimes.  What, do they need a bigger, more horrible judge?  A courtroom with higher benches for more leg room?

If they are not set up for it, they need to get set up for it.  A trial like this would be no picnic in adult court, either.  There will be all sorts of procedural motions and delays and considerations of the sentiments of the family and psychiatric evidence and a dissection of the family’s life and massive press coverage, but there’s no reason all that shouldn’t happen in juvenile court.

There’s one more thing I’d like to say.   I could be wrong, but whenever I  hear about a child killing their parent, I tend to think it was the fault of the parent.   I’m no child psychologist, and my kids are a bit out of control at times, but I’m not concerned that they are going to up and kill me some day.  That’s just not the way they are being raised.

I saw “The Bad Seed” but I think it was fiction.