Senator Grumpy Snaps at a Reporter!

St. John got testy with a Wall Street Journal reporter?!?! What went wrong? Had she given Obama some love? Did she forget McSurge's favorite donut? Did she spill his favorite coffee? Did she tease him about his failing hair?!?!

The look on Lindsay Graham's face is funny, too. Lindsay Graham...a toadier sycophant is harder to imagine.

Shaking Up Dobbs and Novak in a Jar

When I was very, very young...1st grade? kindergarten? a cruel thing my friends and I sometimes engaged in was trapping various ants and other insects in a jar, and then shaking said jar to see if hideous arthropod warfare could be induced.

Now that I am older and more enlightened, I haven't thought about that particular childish stunt for a long, long time. It occurred to me today, though, listening to Lou Dobbs' show, which is pressing on in his summertime absence, that Dobbs has the kind of bottled up anti-immigrant anger that might be unleashed if he was properly agitated in a over-sized jar with Bob Novak, the Dark Lord of the Beltway.

Novak, for those of you who haven't been watching the news, smashed a pedestrian the other day with his black Corvette and fled the scene, only to be caught by a vigilante bicyclist who witnessed the sordid event. BN is a long time racing enthusiast with an anger problem directed at jaywalkers....the poor fellow he hit this time, though, apparently had the walk signal.

Shaking the two of them up in a jar seems like a suitable punishment for both men.

McSame: The Early Years

CNN is running an hour-long puff piece on both candidates...first half hour was Obama, second is devoted to McSame.

For some reason, CNN totally glossed over McSame's first marriage...watching this schmaltz, you'd think Johnny Mac went straight from the Hanoi Hilton to the Keating Five hearings.

Bizarre.

There was one nice clip of him arguing with W, though...must be from the 2000 debates. W is so pissy; McSame so angry.

McSurge Throws Stuff At Walls

Here is the latest argument from Team McSame: Obama is just like...Bush.

Yeah...that'll stick.

McSame's campaign is hopeless; and the candidate is hopeless. Maybe these arguments worked in 1992 Czechoslovakia.

Lebowski Fest Pics

Lebowski Fest has posted their photos. Lee and I can be found here, among the Prom Picture Gallery photos. We posed in front of the staircase backdrop from the Dude's Busby Berkley dream.

I'll be posting the photos Lee and I took, later in the week.

Lebowski Fest Video Update

Here is the first Youtube Lee has located from the 7th Annual Lebowski Fest, and it actually has footage of me and Lee at about the 5'30" mark, immediately after a brief interview with an intoxicated Jackie Treehorn. I have a pic of me posing with this Treehorn, soon to be posted here...he was bowling in the lane next to us, and came all the way from California.

The videographer was very tall...I'd say 6'8". That's why the angle on many of the shots is downward.

He walked by, complimented my outfit and Lee's prop, chatted with us briefly and then whipped out the camera with hardly any notice. I think he did a good job capturing the ambience of the Fest.

Is There A Ralph's Around Here?...Post Lebowski Fest: Sunday

We slept late, but still got down to the Sunday brunch by 10 or so.

The hotel brunch was the same as their regular breakfast buffet, only $5 more per head for the opportunity to enjoy some less than fresh fruit salad and roast beef...

There were a few Lebowski stragglers in the crowd, but no one we recognized.

After checkout we didn't really have time for anything else, so we went bowling one last time. The bowling alley was deserted, save for one family of four a few lanes to our left. I actually bowled a couple of decent games, 169 and 160, before fading in my last game. Lee spent most of his time experimenting with throwing a spinner, and his scores reflected it.

Our United flight out of Louisville was delayed, but we still got into Chicago in time to make our connection. I read the Louisville newspaper on the way over...I wasn't impressed with it.

At O'Hare I grabbed a Tribune, and I think it was almost as thin as the Louisville paper. The sports section really sucked, and other than an interesting article about a new device for treating cardiac heart failure (some kind of netting like those used to hold a dozen oranges) there wasn't much there.

Listening Machine Syndrome: On the ride to Providence Lee had the window; I was in the middle, I had an elderly woman to my right. We did not converse until we were 15 minutes out of TF Green Airport. She accidently slammed her Dooney & Bourke (sp?) handbag into me, then quickly apologized. Before you could say "tell me your life story" she had told me her life story. Born and raised in Connecticut. Undergrad at Central CT. Master's at U. of Arizona - a free ride. Loved Tuscon. Loves the West. Has friends scattered all over: Portland, Oregon. California, Utah, Arizona. Lives in eastern CT. Retired 1st grade teacher; but still helps out a few hours per week while she still has her wits about her. Just returned from 2 weeks in Tahoe. Flew in and out of Sacramento. Met a female friend; they drove to Tahoe rental; friend's family rented same house for 30 years. Kayaked; loved it. Now wants an inflatable kayak. Has traveled all over the planet: Galapagos (flew to Guayaquil, Ecuador, first, then onto the islands), Amazon River, China, India, Europe; every year a big long trip with a friend. Thinking about New Zealand, or an Antarctic cruise. Taught overseas, in Spain, Asia. One grandchild, a boy named Alex. Daughter lives in Shelton, CT, and is a midwife; son-in-law is a pediatrician or ob-gyn, I forget. At a hospital in New Haven. St. Raphael's. Brother's a retired doctor. She owns Pfizer stock; bought it at 15, sorry to see it hovering around 17 now.

As you can tell, this was pretty much a monologue.

Then we landed, taxied to the gate. As soon as the lights in the cabin came on, she turned her back on me, and leaped out of her seat...and never looked back in my direction again. I've experienced this syndrome before...people who treat you as if you are a listening machine that turns off automatically as soon as the plane connects to the jetway. I think it is kind of rude. My wife's theory is that people like her are nervous about the landing, and just talk through it rather than face it alone. Still rude behavior, though...

Picked up the Rodeo and was back at home by 11 pm. Lee continued onto CT, but not before demonstrating the rotating marmot for everyone.

And that pretty much wraps 'er up. So to speak.

The Bums Lost...Lebowski Fest: Saturday

As soon as we got up Saturday, Lee raced to finish his marmot. The cordless drill needed 16 hours to charge. By now it was ready. All we had to do was finish sewing the legs of the collie together to make it more linear, and trim the excess dowel.

Both operations went smoothly. A test spin of the marmot was a success!

I finished assembling my moustache, spray painted my hat white, and we left for breakfast.

The spray paint took nearly all day to dry.

Later that afternoon, we ran into Jim Hoosier, aka Liam, and he posed for a photo with Lee and I. A very nice guy - he couldn't have been nicer.

It was about 97 degrees and very humid, so Lee and I did the garden party in shorts. The afternoon garden party was an excuse to sell more beer and merchandise, but we enjoyed hanging out and listening to various bands play live music and chatting with other fans.

We ran into Dave and Matt from Calgary again. We had first met them Thursday night at the hotel bar. They had been drinking white Russians that night, natch. When I ordered a White Russian, as well, our cover was blown (Lee eventually tried the White Russian, and to my great surprise, he liked it. Lee is not generally very open to trying new tastes...it was a big enough surprise that he actually tried it. ). They are both toy store employees at Discovery Hut. They were happy to be in Louisville, as the Calgary Stampede is going on right now and no one shops in their store during Stampede, apparently. Now they were just hanging out at the garden party, as hot and sweaty as we were.

Back to White Russians: I'm not a huge vodka fan...so I stick to Sombreros.

There were various games to play, with proceeds going to Louisville charities. I played Toss the Marmot and won a pack of Nihilist Gum (slogan: It doesn't taste like anything). One game had been set up the night before...the Ringer Toss, which involved launching a bowling bag ringer at a mannekin Nihilist while sitting in the front seat of the rusty green Ford Torino Lebowski-mobile. I missed the Nihilist, my ringer going left of the target.

Around 7 we headed back to the hotel to change for the costume party at 8. The humidity was delaying the drying of my hat, so it was still a little tacky to the touch. The moustache went on easy enough with double sticky tape, but I could tell that the heat and humidity were going to be an issue all night, and I was right. I battled that moustache throughout the evening.

While standing in line for the costume party, I completed Round One of the trivia contest. The line got long, and you could see various Dudes, Maudes, Jesuses and Walters milling around. I never got called for Round Two, so I didn't make the cut.

The bowling itself was pretty awful...although the lanes are good as lanes go: modern, good wood, computerized scoring. Most Lebowski Fest folks don't know how to bowl, or understand bowling etiquette, so each game was painful to watch and participate in. But we had fun posing with other characters...many folks would walk by and tell me "I like yer style," and Lee and I both got requests to pose from other fans.

The bowling party attendance was probably closer to 1000 folks. There were about 300 or so people bowling at any one time, and lots of people in costume milling around. The alley had White Russian stations and also offered "Oat Sodas," aka Miller and Bud Lights.

I tried to pose with at least one of each type of character I could find...I posed with various Dudes, 2 Jesuses, one Walter, one Maude, one Saddam, 2 Jackie Treehorns, and a Brandt. Lee had a few folks yell "Nice marmot!" at him, so he was happy. And I ran into Jim Hoosier again, and he posed with me and a drunken girl from Indianapolis.

The Brandt (Adam from Chicago) bowled with us, and his friend Barry was a Jackie Treehorn. They disappeared halfway though our bowling match, and when they reappeared, they told us they had been interviewed by USA Today, so that was cool.

The costumes most in play for the trophy of Best Costume were based on wordplay...there were 2 women dressed like beavers carrying a cardboard picture frame. They would open the frame, ask you to pose with them, and voila, you were in a "Beaver Picture."

One girl walked around with a lamp shade on her head, feeding what appeared to be a large turd in a diaper using a baby bottle. She called herself "New Shit Has Come to Light."

One of the Dudes brought along his wife, who dressed as the never-seen-in-the-movie character, Larry's teacher, Mrs. Jamtoss.

Two lanes down from us a short swarthy guy was bowling and having his every move videotaped. It was apparently the host of the Food Network show Ace of Cakes, who had created a Giant Toe cake with White Russian frosting. I had a small slice after the crowd assaulted the cake; it was good. The episode will be aired in September, I was told.

All in all, a fun evening, with plenty of bad bowling, watery drinks, oat sodas, rotating marmots, and flash photography.

There was an "after party" from 1- 3 am at our hotel...Lee and stopped by briefly to check it out, but we didn't stay. We would have needed a lot more alcohol to enjoy that shindig, and we're not really party animals.

Nice Marmot...Lebowski Fest: Friday

We spent the morning plotting our plans for the Saturday costume bowling party...after some deliberation, Lee decides not to dress up, but rather build a mechanical marmot.

The "marmot" scene in the movie is hilarious, of course. And according to the Lebowski Fest book "I'm a Lebowski, You're a Lebowski," the "marmot" in the tub was a stuffed animal mounted on a stick, rotated at high speed with a power drill. So Lee figured he might find a cheap cordless drill, a stuffed animal, and recreate the device.

I opted to dress as the Sam Elliott character and narrator of the movie, "The Stranger." So I needed to locate a white cowboy hat, a blue shirt, and a brown vest.

We found most of what we needed in the local WalMart, which I am normally averse to shopping in, due to the anti-union, anti-healthcare attitudes of management. But we also couldn't spend a lot on the costumes, in reality, so WalMart it was.

Lee got a cheap Black and Decker cordless for $20, a wooden dowel, a small brown and white stuffed collie or Sheltie, rubber cement and sewing stuff. I bought a cheap brown Panama hat for $10, a can of white spray paint, some brown ribbon for a hat band, and a long sleeve blue shirt.

The marmot needed some surgery. First, a hole in the nether regions to accomodate the dowel. Cement on the dowel, then insert through the newly minted canal . Then the limbs sewn together for streamlining. Lee darkened the white limbs with a black Sharpie. He placed his computer in its bag on top of the marmot to help the cement set.

Lee was pretty much done; I had two remaining issues: The Stranger has a large gray handlebar moustache and wears a brown leather vest. Cheap leather vests were nowhere to be found, but Lee found a ladies' sleeveless brown shirt in a clearance rack for $7 that I was able to strip down with scissors into something that looked like a vest from a distance. I then fashioned the moustache out of strands of gray yarn on top of a piece of gray cardboard, using the cement to hold it together.

Having successfully obtained our costume accoutrements and achieving the minimal task that was our charge, we went bowling.

Walking around the hotel following bowling, we could see that other fans were beginning to check in. Mostly young and geeky. And mostly men, though we saw several couples. I guess the demographic could have been predicted.

The Fest itself began later that afternoon at 6, kicking off with a hotel conference room screening of a new documentary called "The Achievers," a tribute to Lebowski Fest and its fans. It was nicely done, and Lee and I had arrived early enough to get decent seats.

The gates for the outdoor party opened at 8 pm, and Lee and I arrived around 8:30, in time to check out the merch table and buy some t-shirts and buper stickers. The party was held on the grassy area across from the bowling alley, and probably held 600 or 700 people. The musical act Pleesee-a-saur opened at 9. It consisted of an entertaining costumed guy dancing and singing in front of two small white screens that displayed changing images related to the songs. Think of a cross between Devo, Talking Heads, and performance art. I liked it. We both thought the music was too repetitive, though...every song sounded the same...techno-style disco.

Brian Posehn was the following comedy act. He was pretty good; crude, self-deprecating. I had no idea he was so big...6'6", and heavy. I may get his new CD.

The final event for Friday was an outdoor screening of The Big Lebowski. This Lee and I did not plan ahead for, so we were chairless, and blanketless. The yard was not that big, so we were forced to watch from the increasingly buggy edges of the property, and at a tough angle. By the time Posehn was wrapping up, we decided to hightail it back to the hotel. We ended up watching some the movie from my laptop and turning in around midnight. A fun day, though, and we are excited about tomorrow.

Lebowski Fest Eve: Thursday

The Indolence in Manic Indolence means that we rarely post in real time, due to the amount of recovery required if substance abuse was involved, whether or not lawyers or accountants were consulted, and/or good ole procrastination.

Regarding Lebowski Fest, all three may apply.

Lebowski Fest Eve: Thursday, July 10

Our flight here to Louisville, via Cleveland, was smooth. The only TSA-related issue was that my bowling bag was confiscated for special examination. While the TSA lady was wiping my dark green ball for traces of C-4, I was frantically ransacking my memory banks for whether or not I had forgotten any potentially incriminating or weird items in that bag. My amateur bowling career ended around 1995, when the toll on my back became too much. I probably haven't opened that cheesy fake red leather bag more than 2 or three times since.

After it passed inspection, I asked the agent if my shoes were in there...she said yes. Which was a relief, as I generally avoid renting shoes whenever I can.

Lee and I checked in the Executive Inn, diagonally across a huge intersection from the bowling alley venue for Lebowski Fest. The hotel is going south, accomodations-wise. Old carpets. Funky odors wafting from the dark hallway corners. 70s decor. But our room is okay, and the event price was right: 85 per night.

Leaving the hotel to go to the Louisville Slugger Museum at 3, we actually ran into Jim Hoosier "Liam" as he entered the hotel for the first time, so our LF experience is getting off to a good start.

The museum was cool, too...watching how baseball bats were/are made.

Bacon and Water Chestnuts vs. Pteradactyl Toes

Speaking of meat, my oldest daughter made appetizers for a little political pow-wow we had at our house last night. She marinated water chestnuts in soy sauce, wrapped them in bacon, skewered them with toothpicks and cooked them for 30 minutes. They were quite tasty. A nice, crunchy, low-cost alternative to bacon and scallops. I like bacon and scallops, but not enough to have more than a couple.

I remember an unusual appetizer from a Christmas dinner party at my boss' house back when I was a young writer. My boss, the hostess, served skinned chicken drumsticks that had been marinated in soy sauce. The hallmark was that she had used a knife to scrape all of the meat into a ball, with the naked bone sticking up as a handle. To me, they looked like blackened dinosaur toes. I tried one, and it didn't taste too bad. But then I made the mistake of going into the kitchen while her hubby was removing batch two. The tray slipped onto the dog-hair coated floor, and he just scooped up the fallen toes, briskly brushed the dog hair off them and then offered them to the crowd of us standing around.

All in all, a classy event at a classy party. The husband, a salesman, later showed off a huge glossy promotional poster of the items he sold: breast pumps.

He used it to blanket the door to their family room.

Man Hits Mom With Polish Sausage

Well, there's a reason Fark.com has a Florida tag...but I found this at The Smoking Gun, not Fark.

The guy had an excuse...he had been drinking, according to Mom.

A 46-year-old man drunk-shopping with Mom at a Florida supermarket. What did she expect? Flowers?

btw: every time I'm in Florida I seem to run into this couple, arguing in the aisles about cigarette money.

Dirtnap Artist Jesse Helms, Again

From Wikipedia, via the blog Bitch, Ph.D.:

"Helms once deeply offended a black colleague, Democratic Senator Carol Moseley-Braun of Illinois, by singing part of "Dixie" on a Capitol elevator.

Soon after the Senate vote on the Confederate flag insignia, Sen. Jesse Helms (R.-N.C.) ran into Mosely-Braun in a Capitol elevator. Helms turned to his friend, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R.-Utah), and said, "Watch me make her cry. I'm going to make her cry. I'm going to sing 'Dixie' until she cries." He then proceeded to sing the song about "the good life" during slavery to Mosely-Braun (Gannett News Service, 1993-09-02; Time, 1993-08-16).[17]"

Jesse Helms, RIP

They say de mortuis nil nisi bonum, in some circles. Ahhh...sometimes you have to make exceptions.

from The Guardian's obituary, via AmericaBlog:

"In domestic politics he denounced the 1964 Civil Rights Act as "the single most dangerous piece of legislation ever introduced in the Congress," voted against a Supreme Court justice because she was "likely to uphold the homosexual agenda," acted for years as spokesman for the large tobacco companies, was reprimanded by the Justice Department and the Federal Election Commission for electoral malpractice, and compiled a dismal personal record as a slum landlord."

Lawn Chair Balloon Fantasies

I had read about the guy in 1982 who attached helium-filled weather balloons to his lawn chair, and flew out of San Diego, I think, into the desert, occasionally shooting them out as needed with a shotgun he was carrying. He ended up getting fined for breaking air-traffic control laws.

Well, some guy in Oregon has repeated this stunt for the 3rd time, and was apparently rather successful. Not taking any chances, he equipped himself with all kinds of high tech goodies, including an altimeter, a GPS device and a parachute.

And I thought the Kool-Aid ballast was a good idea.

And Her Visit to The Hague Will Be Memorable

Condi says she's "proud" of our invasion of Iraq.

Something tells me her post-Bush life is not going to include points of interest in Europe that aren't US Embassies (or other sanctuaries).

Never Saw That Before

In the top of the third inning of today's Red Sox-Yankees game, on the 25th anniversary of Dave Righetti's no-hitter, btw, I witnessed something new in a baseball game, something I'd never seen before in 44+ years of watching and playing baseball.

With 2 runners on base, Kevin Youkilis hit a ball to deep left off Yankee pitcher Rasner that Johnny Damon got his glove on temporarily. Unfortunately for Johnny and Yankee fans, the ball popped out, spun several rotations and sat for a couple of seconds on the top of the left field wall, as if it was deciding whether or not to fall backwards and grant Youkilis a three-run home run, or fall forwards and continue the mayhem. Damon's flailing legs appear to rock the fence just enough to make the ball drop softly back into play. Youkilis must not have been running hard all the way: any runner with a lick of speed would have turned this scenario into an inside-the-park homer, I think.

Update: spoke today (Saturday) to my brother-in-law Richard, an ardent Sox fan, and he claims upon replay that Youkilis was running hard the whole way. He's just slower than a tranqed-up tortoise.

The Germs on a Pen

I asked a young woman to sign a petition for me today. She agreed to sign, but spurned my offer of a pen.

"Too many germs," she said. She then brandished her own writing utensil.

I'm thinking she's a little OCD about cleanliness. I have never worried about the disease-spreading potential of a pen or pencil or crayon.

I'm sure I've accidently consumed all manner of bacteria, viruses, and protozoa over the years, sticking dirty pens in my mouth, temporarily storing them there to free my hands.