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November 26, 2012 - November 19, 2012

Friday, November 04, 2011

Thursday, November 03, 2011

GIVE IT A CHANCE. I've always hated American Idol. A bunch of Whitney Houston impersonators adding endless notes to pedestrian songs. But I decided to look in on X-Factor because I suspected Simon Cowell wasn't wholly a monster based on his discoveries of middle-aged diamonds in the rough like Paul Potts and Susan Boyle. I know it's been a slow starter in the ratings race, but there are several ways it's significantly better than Idol. There is no age limit, the format of the show is designed to provide maximum exposure for a handful of acts that are truly talented, whether they win the grand prize or not, and the judges are not there to scorn the pretenders but to mentor and promote talents they have invested their own time and production skills in. On this show the judges are advocates, not assassins. It makes you feel good.

I convinced my extremely reluctant wife to watch and she was blown away. The contestants aren't all superstars, but they're far superior to the drek of American Idol.


Each judge has a category of performers. And they'll be responsible for sending somebody home on a regular basis. It doesn't please them because they like what they're seeing.


That's all I have to say. I wouldn't have said this much except that my wife suggested it. That's the real miracle here.

EXPLORING SHRIVES GUILT. People don't understand the riches of web resources like YouTube and Google. The amount of available stuff is nearly infinite. I've tried in the past to show you what YouTube contains. Today it's Google's turn.

I executed a search for "the most beautiful." Here's the result.

And here's my favorite:



Sure I can disagree. But truthfully, there are a lot of beautiful words on the list.

But there's also this, this, this, this, and this. And, absurdly, this.

So it's all supremely subjective. Why I'm inviting you all to nominate your own "most beautiful" places, music, architecture, women, words, poems, paintings, cars, whatever.

Let's have a huge fight about it. (Unless you'd rather stew about Cain and Obama.)

Tuesday, November 01, 2011

I SO WANTED TO LIKE HER. What it is to be old and soft. I had thought that maybe Michelle was the silver lining of this abominable administration, that her duties as First Lady were exposing her to a real America that refuted her Princeton fantasy of an evil slave state. I guess I was wrong about that. Read the whole thing.


This is the person Barack Obama goes home to. It makes me more worried than ever.

P.S. There's also this:


I just thought she was getting better. My bad.

Monday, October 31, 2011

WE HAVE FUN. I've been away from the site for more than a few days, which doesn't normally occur, and I feel obliged to offer an explanation to assure you it's not going to be a trend.

Lady Laird and I have been to Pittsburgh for a long weekend. We were on a mission. Our granddaughter Pippa attends college there and it became necessary for us to say "Hi, Andy"  to a portrait of Andrew Mellon so his ghost wouldn't trip her when she passed through the lobby of the administration building on her way to class. All the underclassmen swear this is a constant threat.

We were happy to assist. My helpmeet made the hotel reservations, arranged for the rental vehicle, scoped out the route via the GPS function on her iPhone, and conducted the intense negotiations required to get a veterinary clinic to house all three of our dogs for nigh on 72 hours. (People think Hillary is a tough bargainer. At the end they weren't even surly when they agreed to the king's ransom times two she had kept as her diplomatic ace in the hole.)

I did my part as well. I fell ill with a severe respiratory complaint that should have made it impossible to leave my computer for any reason whatsoever, barring the noble altruism of a man who also prefers not to live in total spousal silence for the next three months, and when tears, tantrums, special pleadings, and brilliantly ingenious excuses by the dozen availed nought, I went out to the TrueValue and purchased two timers to fool the burglars prepared to pounce on our house when the sighthounds and I were no longer sleeping on our sentinel couches. Then I somehow managed to extract the high tech timer devices from their senior-proof packaging and, with the aid of my immense intellect and a magnifying glass, deciphered the instructions on their installation and activation. Several false starts later, they actually worked. You know. Man stuff.

It's easy for you youngsters to say, "So what? You got in a car, drove there and back, and now you want a medal?" Of course I want a medal. This one will do:


You have no idea what it's like for a civilized homebody to burst suddenly out of his small world into the wild west that exists slightly left of the Main Line.  There be horses and buggies out yonder, starting as early as the Lancaster exit of the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Amishers. At every mile marker afterward you wonder, will the roads be paved? Will we fall headfirst into a godawful Kevin Costner movie involving deerskins and subliminal native symbols?

Thus, Friday morning found me piloting a bright red Ford Escape stuffed with dogs and luggage to the first checkpoint, where Lady Laird began the intricate process of canine-ransom exchange by leading a 13-pound pug into the office of the commissar, who like all communist apparatchiks everywhere, had no record of the intended transaction and needed all new paperwork. When she returned, hours later, to give me the okay to bring the other two, I was filled with admiration -- until I beheld the face of the functionary in charge when she saw a greyhound and a deerhound.

"I thought you meant three pugs," she said. "This changes everything."

To this day, people -- generally younger, dumber people -- ask me why I hang onto my grandfather's WWI .45 sidearm and why I added the 16-bullet clip. What can you say to such people? The dogs got their due digs.

Then the great odyssey got truly underway. I drove all 12,000 miles of it, because the alternative would have been to surrender the steering wheel to women who were fighting over which channel of eighties music was going to prevail on the radio until we fell off the western edge of the earth. No thank you. And, yes, there was more than one woman on board. Do you begin to understand my medal claim?

I know I've tested your narrative patience past its limit. Permit me to share the observations of a couch potato dynamited out of his happy zone into the realities of life on the 21st century road. The following are non sequiturs, but I'm convinced that epigrammatists like Pascal and La Rochefoucauld would approve, perhaps even with some envy:


I confidently await the awarding of my medal. Because I'm an old-fashioned hero, nothing if not a legend in his own mind. And after a weekend of higher learning, I'm sold on the self-esteem thing. Bring it on. Back on my couch, I'm entirely comfortable with the idea of being celebrated just for showing up. Maybe it's the progessive in me.


Or maybe I already have my medal. Pippa hugged me when we left and Lady Laird laughed when I read her this post. She's already planning a repeat trip next year. I'm not afraid. I'll drive the whole 24,000 miles. Man stuff.

DON'T CLOSE YOUR EYES. Deja deja vue. Haven't we been here before? Now it's the Democrats who are concerned about politicians who hit on women. Excuse me, the media. Excuse me again, same thing.

Wouldn't bother with this at all, except to point out that we dealt with it nearly a decade ago at Shuteye Nation. Point? The question is old as the hills and interesting only in its salacious details. Even women are bored by the so-called news that prominent men are inclined to hit on attractive younger women. Does the name Bill Clinton ring a bell? Aren't we past the whole "lying about sex" wheeze?

Of course we are. Unless he's a Republican. Or one of those negroes who can't keep his thing in his pants. Or he says something exciting and then keeps his thing in his pants. Which upsets liberal women in particular, sometimes all the way to the Supreme Court. Unless he's pro-choice. In which case, you know. Regardless, with the copletely singular exception of Bill Clinton, no man who aspires to be president can be a sexual rogue. Explanation? We'll get back to you on that by and by.

In the interim, a flashback to Shuteye Nation, Year 2000:

Smithtonian Magazine:    

Presdent Woody Willson never removed his pince-nez, but he relished the company of a young lady named Ebony Flame, who started her Wishington career as a stenographer but soon graduated to taxi dancing. When the Presdent caught sight of her ankle as she was trying to hail a bus near the Capitol Building, he was instantly smitten. The Society arranged many 'propinquities' between Woody and Ebony during his two terms, until the Presdent's illness and general decline at the end of his second term called a halt to pleasure. As required under Society by-laws, Ebony recorded details of their meetings in the OOPS journal, which may be published by Smithtonian at a later date, provided that necessary funding can be procured (preferably through the National Archives, but if need be, via executive order). One racy tidbit may serve to tantalize: Willson's pet name for Ebony was "my stark naked strumpet."
 
   

FDR liked them young, according to Society archivist Destiny LaTour. He also liked them short-haired, boyish in figure, and "dressed to the nines in a birthday suit." There are four portraits of Ameria's longest serving Presdent in the OOPS Gallery, one for each of his terms, although Ms. LaTour makes it plain there were many more than four women involved in Franklin Rosevelt's "propinquities." Even at the end of his life, when he could barely utter a coherent sentence, he was still calling on the Society twice a week or more for company. The young lady shown above is Amber Borgia, an Ittalian by birth, who visited the Oval Office on many occasions during the first term, but returned to her native land for political reasons when relations became strained between the U.S. and Benito Mussoloni, Ittaly's fascist dictator. Her entries in the Society Journal are in Ittalian, but according to Ms. LaTour, that's not all that's exotic about them.
 
 

  James K. Poke was Presdent of the United States during the drive to fulfill Manifest Destiny, a time of unprecedented western migration and national enthusiasm. Poke was an appropriate choice for the country's highest office. He was energetic, flamboyant, and a bit uncouth. When he first delivered his propinquity specifications to the Society, he minced no words in telling them he was "fond of flank steak—the bigger the rump the better." The young lady shown in the Poke portrait was his favorite of dozens who made visits to him in the Oval Office. Her name was Fanny deBoeuf  (a nom de guerre obviously, literally translated as hind end of the beef), but not much else is known of her. Ms. LaTour asserts that she used to sneak into the White House dressed in the merest scrap of a shift: Presdent Poke didn't like to waste time on preliminaries.
 
    Presdent William Howard Tafft was a big man, almost 330 pounds, and it should be no surprise that he also liked his women big. During the interregnum between Theodore Rosevelt and Tafft, the Society had to replace virtually all of its "propinquitors," since Teddy always preferred women to be slim and athletic. The sheer amplitude of the Society's women during the Tafft term is extraordinary. Some of them weighed nearly as much as the Presdent and had to be smuggled into the Oval Office in huge wardrobes, which gave Tafft the reputation of being a spendthrift on suits. One might suppose that the propinquities were therefore sedate and sedentary occasions, but Ms. LaTour claims that Society annals record the replacement of four broken desks in the Oval Office during the Tafft term. The details, alas, must await the publication of the Society's closely guarded journal.
 
   
As the successor to Thomas Jeffersen, whose preferences are well known, James Madison Munroe set many of the precedents that became Society traditions. As a Vagina gentleman, he was punctilious about conducting all his Society business with politesse and grace. Indeed, on many occasions he spoke French, believing it the language of courtly love, and reverted to his native tongue only when it became clear he was not being understood. Always adaptable, the Society began acquiring its propinquitors from Franch, including the young lady shown in this official portrait, who resigned the Parish ballet to dance for Presdent Munroe—and sometimes on Presdent Munroe—in the Oval Office. Her name was Ophelie de Pieds, and her entries in the Society Journal will make fascinating reading for the general public some day. Apparently, Ameria's fourth Presdent liked feet.
 
 
*The Oval Office Propinquity Society

As anyone can see, Herman Cain needs to get a great deal naughtier. More importantly, it seems unlikely Mitt Romney can even get to the starting gate. Maybe Newt knows what he's doing after all.

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