DeBait - Yer darn right!

Bloggin' real time, for you the Readership.

Not since Oscar Night have my random observations of the big race been so captivating....

My first thought, on sitting down to the show (after someone should fix up this room) was that one should not eat hot dogs while watching political debates. It is far too easy to choke.

Here is an excellent fact I heard on NPR (speaking of seething pencil-necked eastern liberals like us): Joe Biden's first Congressional debate occured when Sarah Palin was in the 3rd grade. So was I, for that matter. You know who was hot as a pistol when I was in 3rd grade? Pat Schroeder. now that's hot.

Gwen Ifill - also hot (start counting the use of the word Also). Ifill reminds me of every school principal I had growing up. She could make me eat glass just by cocking an eyebrow and saying, "Think you got some glass to eat there." She's got it all over Jim Lay-rah, though I notice they had identical opening remarks.

"Can I call you Joe?" are the Governor's first words, and she sometimes does, but Uncle Joe is loath to call her Sarah. The one time he does, he sucks it back in like a spit-out rice grain, and he has clearly been advised against this familiarity. But sucks, she's jest a gal from the fronn-teer, she can't help but call a Joe a Joe.

You know what I do like is Biden's conversational tone of voice -- an interview more than a speech. Hillary Clinton won me over during her famous "cafe breakdown" moment, not because she almost cried, but because for the first time I was able to hear her normal speaking voice. Later this evening, we will see Biden nearly cry, but it doesn't win me over.

Pat Schroeder could tell you a few things about that.

What's remarkable about recordings of Bobby Kennedy speeches is how almost dull his speaking voice was. But because you are not distracted by it, you can listen to what he is saying. So I get it that people like the plain talkin' and all. The difference for me is I like to hear substantive things spoken as if you have really thought about and internalized them, rather than if they were forwarded in email from your Aunt Dottie.

When Palin opens with soccer parents on the sidelines, she may win over those soccer parents, but I don't want my leaders to be just like me. I'm not very good.

The one-time sports reporter knows how to work the camera, though, which most sideline parents will not. Biden seems to forget that he might sometimes be on screen, in spite of having seen the first C-Span cameras roll in in 1979 (Sarah Palin - 15).

Biden tells a good story about the guy who doesn't know what it costs to fill his tank because he never has enough money. That's a clever turn of phrase, but you played right into the hands of the Governor with more poor people than you. If she were quicker on her feet, she might have picked up on that, but it was not on the notecards.

Here are some petty points:

Joe - this lighting is not flattering you.

Sarah - how far back on your head are your ears?

Sarah - is peplum coming back? Because I am afraid I will not look as fierce in it as I once believed I did.

Joe - if I think about what your hair does when you lie down in the bathtub, I get pretty freaked out.

Joe - Sarah's flag is more patriotic than yours -- because it supports the troops, and it is sparkly.

Right about here Palin disses the current administration.

That's pretty awesome, whether she meant to do it or not. But the RNC just might call her into the office tomorrow.

It astounds me whenever anyone tries to explain the US Healthcare system. I just spent about an hour the other night trying to reconcile my claim statements against my actual doctor visits this year. There were 3 of them. Plus 2 mammograms. I was there for all of them. And I still can't match charges to "services" provided.

I have become distracted by trying to figure out what the backdrop is quoting.

What if Oprah moderated these discussions and made them sit on couches? Or better yet, Dr Phil on those wierd barstools. I knew Dick Cavett. Dick Cavett was a friend of mine. You, sir, are no Dick Cavett.

Palin: "Energy is my area of expertise."

Joe - stop raising your hand when you speak; it is veiny and clawlike. You might as well laugh like Walter Brennan.

Palin: "Alaska feels climate change more than every other state." Phone call for you, Governor. It's the Gulf Coast.
Biden: "...safe nuclear." It takes a Pennsylvanian to add the word SAFE to nuclear.

Natural gas pipeline? Ok, that sounds serious and real. If Alaska's governor is the kind that has real power and input into projects like that, then I am interested. If this is, like...say... Texas' governor, then maybe it doesn't mean anything.

Alaska has 375 million acres. 60% of it is federal land, another 44 million (>10%) is tribal land. The state itself owns about 90 million.

Gwen goes for the lightning round, including a turn at "would you rather?" on Iran and Afghanistan. Palin admits that some of her best friends are gay-friendly.

During this segment Palin remains smooth and unstuttering on her "Main St" ideas. When George Bush talks, I think he is not even listening to himself. It is like he has learned the lines phonetically. I do believe that Sarah Palin believes what she says. It just makes me want to measure myself for a veil.

Biden: "We will end this war." If ever there were a soundbite in search of an ass...
And here I think Joe Biden might be the first to cry.

Nice exam essay questions, Gwen Ifill. If I didn't already know you are a Simmons woman, I'd wonder if you learned that at Hollins.

True Hollins Exam question from my freshman world religions class; "Who has the right to the Holy Land?" I think I skipped it. It I had only known of the 2-state solution. Darn it! That worked so well in Czechoslovakia. Albania. Iraq. Canada.

As the night wears on, Biden begins to weaken. I am reminded of A Little Night Music.

A weekend in the country

Is delightful

If it's planned.

Wear your hair down, and a flower,

Don't use makeup, dress in white.

She'll grow older by the hour

And be hopelessly shattered by Saturday night.

Palin's granddaughterly respect act is her white dress; her gushing recitation of Biden's primary conflicts with Obama are the flower in her hair. I am waiting for her to say "I have looked up to you my whole life! I wrote a report on you in civics class after you were charged with plagarism!"

Man, I am growing older by the hour myself. And this is one long hour.

Palin goes in for the kill, pulling her Columbo act. "You Washington lifers, I just don't understand. The one thing I can't figure, Senator, and just forgive me, I won't be a minute... but where were you when the appropriations went missing?" (you have to imagine my dead-on Peter Falk and it really kills). Joe starts to flail around like Frankenstein's monster, watching the clock, licking his lips. He digs into every one of his reported hometowns for a similar Joe Six-Pack experience.

Palin: "John McCain knows how to win a war."

Shoot again, barracuda. That one's a brick.

Palin: "Doggone it." Doggone it? Seriously?! Well H-E-double hockey mom sticks. Who wants Hot Dish?

When asked to describe their proposed VP roles, they are
Palin - intern
Biden - First Lady

Suddenly, in the "final throes," Biden tosses a glove at the feet of Dick Cheney, calling him the "most dangerous vice president this country has known." Aaron Burr snickers and says, "Pfft - His guy didn't even die." Biden's car may roll off the road on the way home.

As the Palins and Bidens meet on the stage, after the bell has rung, I hear myself think, "That is a lot of daughters in one place." And I don't know yet what I think about that, only that it was remarkable.

In the end, Geraldine Ferraro summed up most of what I was thinking in her after-chat with Brian Williams. It's not drawn in here - I can't find a clip of it posted yet, but you can look for it. I probably didn't need to write this essay at all.

Mondale/Ferraro was my first presidential election, as I have mentioned before, and tonight made me miss her a little bit.

Ferraro/Schroeder in 2012. If only such a thing were possible.

Public Service Announcements

How I killed an entire Sunday.



#14 in an occasional series of repressed 70's memories that turn out to be true.
Dedicated to my parent-friends who insist it is harder to raise children now. I suppose it must be harder to bring up the topic of VD, much less explain irony.

"Mom, if VD is for EVERYBODY, should I ask my doctor for help? I don't have it."

As we used to say around the corner, "Gonorrhea is nothing to clap about."
The song on the radio went like this:
I got it from Sandy
Sandy got it from Paul
Paul got it from Ernestine
Who coulda got it anywhere at all.

One reader of the Cape May County Herald agrees with me.

Along with making good "drug decisions," the talk of 6th grade health class was "venereal symptoms and how to distinguish them." Because you want to mark it correctly in your field guide and give your partner(s) the right information. (Oh fever, night fever, night fe--ver... )

I loved PSAs. They were little horror movie snacks between Afterschool Specials, which were never on enough.

My top 10 fave PSAs from the panelled years.

10 Give a hoot
Woody's unfortunate weirdness as a talking animal and a creepy puppet did not deter from his authoritative stance on pollution. Pollution was very very serious in the 70s. We forgot about it for a while while we were chanting U-S-A. But any retrospective of PSAs must include the one-two punch of Woodsy and Iron Eyes

9 Only YOU...
In the same family was the domineering Smokey the Bear, whose tragic cubhood turned him into the Batman of the forest. Yes YOU CAN prevent forest fires, you selfish human scum. Grow hair and live INSIDE. And stop smoking already (see #3)

Take a good long look at that poster. The bear shall lie down with the fawn. After a prayerful interlude. Watch this one with the lights on.

Smokey would point right at you like Uncle Sam and hold you personally responsible. According to Wikipedia (and why would they be wrong) Smokey is today voiced by Sam Eliot. That could give you nightmares.

I saw Smokey at the Washington Zoo when he was still alive. He didn't seem happy.

8 Play safe
Pollution + unsupervised children = Childhood will kill you. This is the important lesson.

Your grandparents had scarlet fever and mining disasters. You have abandoned refrigerators, insulators, blasting caps, and parents. Between Jiminy Cricket and the Crash Test Dummies was a whole lotta scary shit.

7 "But da moon cain't hoit ya"
So many ways to get cancer. So little time. As this commercial explains, we are "crazed by tan." How crazed? This crazed.

The American Cancer Society and the Lung Association used to be all over the Tee-vee. Within a generation, they had us feeling pretty stupid about a lot of stuff.

6 Right turn on red after stop
I was not able to find this, and it is better sung. It was a local campaign in Virginia explaining Right-on-Red. For reasons I do not know, it featured a 1940s big band sound and some crossing guard Andrews Sisters who did that point-at-the-ground dance move when they sang "turn right but still have to stop." It ranks high because it is so singable.

5 Parents who use drugs
The American Lung Association launched an anti-smoking campaign called Like Father, Like Son that ran through my school years. One minute seems very long nowadays.

It was replaced by this national treasure.




4 Don't drown your food
All things Timer are lovely. He knew we were home alone eating a bowl of Oreos and would go for something better if we could think of it. Cheese? Hell YA, Timer! And tomorrow it is Sunshine on a Stick.

But "Don't drown your food" is a masterwork. Dr A took this to heart.

3 You mind very much if they smoke
Recall a world where you needed societal support to stand up to Smokers. Recall a world where cigarette jingles were so catchy, the anti-smoking jingle had to be too. This sounds like Jim Croce by way of the King Family.

Here is one I had forgotten. Harry is so accommodating.


I am unable to find video proof of my 2 faves, which is anti-climactic, but your lunch hour must be over by now. Heaven knows mine is.

2 "Don't take the Car! You'll kill yourself......"
LOVED to scream this out on any occasion. The premise is that a husband and wife are fighting, over his drinking, I believe. I picture him in a burnt orange turtleneck and she with a Joan van Ark hairdo, and they are screaming like an Albee play (because that was our culture) and he storms drunk out of the house. She flings open the door and screams, "don't take the car! You'll kill yourself!" but the freeze-frame and reverb has it come out "your-sel..l..l..l...l..." Oh, he does, of course. A good PSA always ends up at the morgue.

1 Lead Paint - I have mentioned this one before. Still can't find an artifact.

But the plot conflict is...
"paint chips peelin'... from the ceilin'... by my baby's bed..."

$50 in cash if you deliver this video to me. In the meantime, enjoy this one:

Blog ennui

I have 25 posts in draft form.

No, please don't applaud; it is nothing to brag about. I had 27, but just killed 2 whose points I could no longer recognize. I suppose I don't always have a point. I also just created 2 more, and tried to put in a few notes in case they should ferment in the Drafts list until such date when I can not remember them anymore.

Today in the middle of reporting in a meeting, I lost my train of thought. And I was taking the minutes. I assured the parents on my team that this would be happening to them anyway, even if they didn't have kids, and spouses, and alimony payments. We all just slowly lose our minds.

Or maybe just our interest.

I went looking for a picture of the little Zoloft guy and am pleased to report there are several gag cartoons of him.

He could be drawn by the Good News for Modern Man people.

Writer's block is so 90s. Dr A recently posted a piece from The Kenyon Review about rejection letters that will speak to any of you who put it out there for publication. Years ago, once I realized the results were the same whether I submitted material or not, I decided to save the postage. The artistic equivalent of "letting oneself go," I suppose. But we hadn't yet invented Bloggening.

Latecomers to my life (that is, anyone in the past 20 years, so safe to say members of my adult life), will eventually say in some context "you should be a writer," as if all that keeps one from it is landing their little car on that space of the Life board. I smile and nod. Yes, that's a great idea, and a very nice compliment. Thanks. What have you been up to? deflect...deflect....

Rebecca Faery once said, "You know you're a writer because you write it down." Rebecca Faery is also known for that famous Hollins phrase, "That is merely the fallacy of dichotous question framing." Of all that she taught me about The Craft, that one is my preferred go-to.

I especially appreciate those moments when the Academic Readership gives me a shout-out. I'll try to deliver again soon. Or perhaps I won't try, which seems to produce better results.

I need to stop reading Augusten Burroughs before bed.

All traffic is good traffic

Caroline has made webenemies, and in the strangest of arenas.

Two years ago, I declared that Keith Urban was not, in fact, "hot." I still stand by that, by the way.

To further antagonize his fans, I will underscore this by saying I file all of these performers under "Toby Keith Urban," and could not pass a blind name that tune test. I don't have to. It's my blog.

By the same phenomenon that may have caused the Bloomberg Report to break the story that American Airlines filed for bankruptcy (again?! No, 6 years ago...) this 2-year old filler story of no importance has generated new traffic, and comments.

Most of the comments are directed at me.

- I have "issues"

- I wish I looked good in Brown-on-brown

- I need to have my eyes opened

Now I'll never get asked to the slumber party.

I compared his look to 1978. I stand by that too.

PS - Parker is still better than Shaun.

I never said anything about you who do think Keith Urban is hot (haha, now I come up in your match no matter what you search on...). But I see I am now totally counted o-u-t, so let me save you the Comment time.

I am gross, queer, ta'hd, I'm ugly and my momma dresses me funny.

But thanks for reading. Arianna Huffington has recommended I should bait traffic with some controversial statement. I had no idea it would be this.

Fall Break

Not now, Dear. Auntie Mame needs a sabbatical. Come back next week.