In The End It's Not The Years In Your Life That Count. It's The Life In Your Years.

Lincoln's Deathbed in the Petersen House

"A little before seven I went into the room where the dying President was rapidly drawing near the closing moments. His wife soon after made her last visit to him. The death struggle had begun. Robert, his son, stood with several others at the head of the bed. He, bore himself well but on two occasions gave way to overpowering grief and sobbed aloud, turning his head and leaning on the shoulder of Senator Sumner. The respiration of the President became suspended at intervals and at last entirely ceased at twenty-two minutes past seven"
Morse, John T. (editor), The Diary of Gideon Welles (1911)

Gideon Welles served Lincoln as Secretary of the Navy. Upon hearing the news that the President had been shot earlier in the evening of April 14th, he and Secretary of War Edwin Stanton rushed to the side of the stricken Lincoln. Aides had moved the dying President across the street from the Ford Theatre to the Petersen House.

"Die when I may, I want it said by those who knew me best, that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow."
— Abraham Lincoln

Disney Has Found Its Eighth Dwarf

Once upon a time there were some miners named Grumpy, Happy, Sleepy, Sneezy, Bashful, and Doc, and, of course, Dopey. They were the Seven Dwarfs that helped to create the Disney Empire. They were short. They were industrious. They were male.

Today, Disney uses a new group of dwarfs to help fashion their empire. They don't have funny iconic names, but they do have eyes that see the obvious and ears that hear the sound of checks being written out to them.

Disney was one of the few animation studios that missed my talented demeanor and droopy-eyed approach to programming, especially boy-centric programming. Now it appears that that boat hasn't so much left me at the dock as sunk in the harbor. Us old diggers who rooted out transcendent ideas as if they were subterranean fungi are now as current as, let me see, Mr. Toad's Wild Ride or the 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea Submarine Voyage. A new breed of creative development executives now gallops across the company's TV landscape: the raging anthropologist and the wily psychologist. Their job: to find out where Disney's lost boys have gone.

The Toon Disney into Disney XD transformation is too complicated and messy to explain in a family friendly blog. I try to remain upbeat and entertaining throughout my writings here. Some news items simply set me down into my own inner space adventures. I'll let this article and this article act as an E ticket ride to bring the reader up to snuff.

I produced more methane reading this particular New York Times article than half the dairy herds in Wisconsin emit in a week. Maybe that's the reason I don't bring newspapers to social events. Apparently Disney TV can't attract boys to its live action and animation programming because… well that's what these new hunters and gathers have been called in to find out. Disney XD has lost its XY.

Disney owned the boys TV market at one time, with Davy Crockett and Zorro and Spin and Marty and The Hardy Boys; but that was so long ago most of America's Interstate Highways were still being numbered odd or even. Those programs were all action-packed, and adventure-oriented, with great characters, plenty of bonehead humor and storylines that made you wish you were part of the proceedings. I wonder if Walt Disney ever asked any of his subordinates to gather themselves up some focus groups to see how long a raccoon tail Davy Crockett's hat should have?

I was part of the Fox Kids team in the '90s that reinvented Saturday morning, developing programming that attracted both genders quite easily. We blew away the competition with Batman, X-Men, Spiderman, Goosebumps, and a re-versioned Beatlejuice. We created the fabled 6-17 demographic, the first time ever that a salesman could sell advertising to such a vast kid market skew. None of us were professional academics, brand consultants, marketing mavens, or long term strategic thinkers. We were rank and file executives who knew story, understood our audience, and most importantly, worked around equally talented writers, storyboard artists, directors, and voice talent. The only time I ever heard the word "focus" was at my ophthalmologist.

Yet now the Rosetta Stone for attracting boys is a ratty Black Sabbath tee shirt. Black Sabbath has been around longer than Stonehenge. I'm not following how Ozzy Osbourne biting off the head of a bat helps configure a show for Disney, but then I don't have a degree in marketing.

If Aaron Stone succeeds, it is not because he is a mediocre hoop player, but rather because he's a normal kid thrust into the role of a superhero – an example of wish fulfillment attractive to both genders. I'm still dreaming of being bitten by a radioactive spider, though lately the only things biting me are villainous creditors.

Forgive me, Lord, for I am about to sin, but I don't know any man who would ever utter something as blatantly moronic as this line: “Winning isn’t nearly as important to boys as Hollywood thinks.”

Really!!!!!Get back to me with various examples because my testosterone-fueled mind can't conjure up one.

Oh, and one other item from this insipid article merits some commentary:

You, the executive VP of Research at MTV: Don't rewrite history! What were you, two years-old when Fox Kids was handing the competition its lunch on barbed wire doilies? We wrote the history on revamping a day-part that was by that time deader than heaven on a Saturday night. You guys just added additional chapters to the logic already established.

People Thought Wright was Wrong at the time of his Death

Today marks the 50th anniversary of the death of America's second greatest architect, his work surpassed only by God's handiwork along the Colorado River.

I know nothing about Frank Lloyd Wright, except that he went to my high school when it was called Madison High, and, like me, stank academically especially in algebra, botany and physics. There is no record that he ever graduated from high school, possibly because the building that housed it looked somewhat like this and he had no hand in its architectural demeanor. In the early 20th century, that building was torn down and replaced by one designed by Cass Gilbert, the architect who designed the Woolworth Building in New York City. That's the one where I roamed the halls and visited the principal's office for six years.

There is a record of me graduating from this high school. But look at what Frank Lloyd Wright did with his life without a high school diploma. Obviously this was a delinquent who didn't care if he was left behind. Is life fair? As fair as the odds in winning the Power Ball. I'll blog about those percentages some other time.

If you want to know more about this iconic Wisconsin native, try the Brenden Gill biography. It's probably one of the best overall view of this genius currently on the market. However, if you are like me and desire the Spark Notes version of FLW's life, Marcus Field of The Independent has done an admirable job -- especially encapsulating the murder, mayhem, adultery, political, and artistic controversy that made up much of Lloyd Wright's 91 years.

Also check out the superb Ken Burns documentary, from which this is a short excerpt:



Now the first time I remember hearing the name Frank Lloyd Wright was in 1956, during What's My Line, a program that introduced me to what it means to watch high society people act with all the panache and charm of Noel Coward-created characters.



Note on this particular episode panelists Peter Lawford and Paul Winchell. I met Winchell a quarter of a century later as the master voice of both Gargamel of the Smurfs and Tigger of Winnie the Pooh.

Shortly after the end of the program, I decided to become a world famous architect. I took out my Lincoln Logs and created my own version of Fallingwater.



Unfortunately, my version ended up looking like this:


At least I didn't flood out my high school. Instead, it was torn down in 1986, about 60 years after the first FLW-designed building in Madison saw the wrecking ball close up and personal.

Palm Sunday Video

BeamerFilms.com

The images within this video could actually be expanded many times over without coming close to the true number of Medieval and High Renaissance depictions of Christ.

Go Figure: Moses is Departing Egypt and Taking His Facebook Friends with Him

You've heard of finger popping time? Well within a couple of days comes Chametz tossing time. Like everything else, it's all about tradition.

This Wednesday evening begins the Jewish holiday of Passover. Some believe that passover is what happens when you're not called for jury duty; but in actuality it is a major religious holiday commemorating not only the passage of the ancient Hebrews out of Egypt, but also the forty years spent constipated eating matzo while roaming around the desert waiting for Moses to ask directions to the Holy Land. Guys asking for directions is like a country road without dirt. If his sister Miriam had been in charge, the sojourn would have ended after a fortnight at best.

The main staple of food during Passover is matzo. Plain matzo can stop a tank in its tracks. Had they used matzo instead of simple Pennsylvania earth to shore up the dam, not only would Johnstown have remained flood free, but the dam itself would now be harder than uncut diamonds. This biblical food is so indigestible that gravel has an easier time flowing through the human digestive tract. Advanced Imodium is like gobbling down a carton of prunes and washing it down with EX-Lax compared to a box of matzo. I think Kevlar jackets have a matzo lining. But matzo is the traditional food. The days following the end of Passover are the busiest times of the year for proctologists. Go figure.

Like all Jewish holidays, Passover revolves around prayer, self-contemplation and food. Most non-religious Jews passover the first two principles rather guiltily, but make up for their sectarian lapses by pigging out (perhaps a bad choice of words) under the third category. Hundreds of years ago, some wise sage summed up all of Jewish history with this pithy remark: "Somebody wants to kill the Jews; the Jews survive; let's eat."

Passover is a holiday so old it takes up Chapters 1-15 in Exodus and is then recapped again in Leviticus 23. On the first and second nights of this eight day holiday a 150 course meal, featuring lamb, soups, briskets, Kugel, cakes, candies (no leavening please) and other cardiologists' nightmares, is served. This is to commemorate the fact that the slaves had scant time to sit around eating sand and dung beetle sandwiches when Moses gave the word to roll on out of Egypt. Grab what you can and leave the rest for Goodwill. This heart-stopping meal is called the Seder.

Girding oneself for these two nights takes weeks of stomach expansion exercises and calorie destroying calisthenics. A new liver is advised, for drinking at this meal is as mandatory as knowing that the serving of food will only end when all arteries are clogged and the paramedics arrive with crash carts.

The Passover wine is so sweet that pure cane sugar could develop diabetes from it. So arduous is the preparation for the Seder that no sooner are the dishes washed and the crowds dispersed than planning begins for the following year. It takes that long just to make sure those who hate each other are seated right next to each other again.

Now Seder in Hebrew means order. People just doesn't get together and begin scarfing down food. That would then make it a wedding or a wake. Tradition demands an order to the serving of the meal. That's where the Haggadah comes in. This ancient text sets down the rabbinical codification of when to serve which dish, how to relax while eating it, what questions children should ask, and what answers no one pays any attention to.

The Haggadah also lays out when to drink the wine, sing songs about goats and, in more modern versions, when to leave your seat to disrupt the ongoing service by talking loudly to others about how poorly your children are turning out. Fun and guilt are had by all.

Various beautifully illustrated Haggadah editions from all over the world have survived through the centuries and now safely reside in various university special collections. One of the most magnificent examples of extraordinary artistry is that created by Arthur Syzk. His Haggadah is possibly the most widely distributed version of the Twentieth Century. The illustration on the left depicts Pharaoh's men drowning in the Red Sea. Remember, the Bible isn't a series of Comedy Central one-liners.

While the Haggadah is an important book, it is not writ sacred. Any participant can add personal and relevant passages to his or her own Haggadah ,as long as the basic line of the ceremony is kept intact. Feminist, gay and lesbian tracts, blessings for our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, and various and sundry political statements have crept into current texts. What never seems to change, regardless of the author, is the amount of food and drink that inherently must be consumed.

Thanks to friends, I stumbled upon this latest version of the Haggadah . I doubt it will end up in any hermetically sealed cabinets, but it certainly does have that feel to it: Moses is Departing Egypt: A Facebook Haggadah.

Hundreds of Haggadah variations are now circulating on the Internet. No doubt there is even an Al Qaeda Haggadah someplace out there with some verse about "Death to the Jews" and "Next Year in Jerusalem or Else." If they drink as much wine during their Seder as is required by Haggadah bylaws, I doubt if any of them will remember their chants the next day, let alone their way back through the Khyber Pass.

Two Short Films Shot Where All Men Fear to Tread

Short film: Out of Order from Flabber TV


Short film: Love Hurts

I love the internets. Was too lazy to go out tonight to rent horror films (or really blog extensively) so went online instead and found these. Short films and tall leggy women from the Netherlands. Winning combination for me regardless of genre. I must admit I didn't get either ending, but then again I might have missed something in the wordless translations.

The French Make the Best Commercials

This clip is not from the movie Madagascar: Escape to Africa. This is an actual French commercial produced several years ago that I stumbled upon last night while reading a post about Dan Ackroyd signing crystal skulls (filled with vodka) in Madison, Wisconsin. I can't make stuff like this up. If I could, I'd be working at this very moment as a paid writer and not as the itinerant cleaner of cat boxes I list myself as on Craig's List.

I have no idea what's being sold here other than it is a beverage of sorts, but I'll take a year's supply of it.



For those who really care about how a commercial like this is made, here are the behind the scenes tricks. The technique is called performance capture, used spectacularly in both Robert Zemeckis' film adaptations of Polar Express and Beowulf.


Addendum: Could Henri Rousseau be the inspiration for the animal design of the commercial? I'm not sure but at least I can end this post on an intellectual note far less provocative than images of God's creatures pole dancing for refreshment.

Oh Canada, Let Me Explain

Darkblack is a Canadian blog of infinite visual stimuli, as well as one of my favorite sites not affiliated with the XXX-Nation. If I could Photoshop this well, I would be employed at The Daily Show or be creating graphics for the New Adventures of the Trailer Park Boys. Darkblack's stuff is that good.

So imagine my consternation when I checked out a recent post and came across this:



Before you Canadians who make the darkblack blog so entertaining go ballistic and threaten to cut off cheap supplies of pharmaceuticals to health-starved Americans, halt the supplies of Edmonton shale oil you export to us, or deny us access to Whistler during ski season, let me "do some splainin" about Red Eye. Drum roll, please!

Fox News -- a comedic organization of shiny-teethed teleprompter readers, a network so rife with factual inaccuracies that it would make Joseph Goebbels cringe -- produces a late, late night comedy of errors called Red Eye. This show actually should be called "one eye," since most of the humor on it is based on the only male muscle with its own brain. Red Eye means to be the Fox News answer to The John Stewart Show. It has most of us muttering, "Who asked the question?"

How dumb is Red Eye? It's so dumb that the Indian Head Test Card pattern scored higher in its SATs. Rimshot!

This show is so boring death row prisoners would rather watch their own sentencing. Bada Bing!

This show is so bad Khalid Sheikh Mohammad preferred waterboarding to watching Red Eye when offered a choice of torture methods. Canned laughter, anyone?

Program executives filled the airwaves with this Romper Room of the Wretched because the ab-roller or ShamWow infotainment spots were too cerebral for the normal Fox late night viewer. "I'm here all week. Try the brisket!"

Red and Eye are monosyllabic, much like the typical Fox News report, thus making this seamless programming in the parlance of the business. "Wanna buy a duck?"

The show's premise has always been as simple as the mis-reading of the Second Amendment. Round up guys so insufferable that Quakers would enjoy beating them up, surround them with giggling, bone-dense sorority chicks whose cup sizes match their IQ's, and then drool out knuckle dragging, dirt eating nonsense to an audience simultaneously producing its own red eyes with shots of Jagermeister and Red Bull.

Red Eye specializes in right wing humor, which means the weak, the poor and the infirm deserve the same kind of "light belittling" the barbarians inflicted upon Rome. Like all other programs on Fox News, a dress code of tin foil hats and wife-beater shirts is mandatory. The jokes shoot out with all the ferocity of a clogged sphincter and tend towards the same hipness as eight tracks and pet rocks. Punch lines sink faster than the moral reputations of revelers Larry Craig and David Vitters. The writers are all graduates of the All Children Left Behind for Good Cause School of schlock and yawn. They work in crayon, because pencils and felt tip pens have points far too sharp for their dull minds. The show's graphics are meant to reassure the viewer that there are other reasons to learn to read besides following the directions on home pregnancy tests and signing domestic disturbance police reports.

Don't take Red Eye seriously. None of the comedy clubs in this country do -- otherwise you would see its participants working the rooms rather than busing the tables. You have the pretty currency, so let us have our loonies.

Anyway, get off of our backs. You Canadians had the opportunity to arrest Bush in Calgary (in an earlier posting I said Ottawa by mistake--me bad, especially in geography) when he gave his first post-1600 Pennsylvania Avenue speech. Perhaps you were hoping he'd take Harper back to the States with him. Up there, Bush was quoted as saying he was writing an authoritarian book on his 12 toughest decisions. Obviously, working his act on foreign soil made him even dumber. I didn't know our ex-president could count to double digits.

This Bushism is not Red Eye humor, unlike their tasteless jokes about Canadian deaths in Afghanistan. The word "authoritarian" has far too many syllables for anyone on the show to pronounce correctly. Secondly, malapropism sounds like a disease that can only be cured through faith-based intervention, and that's far too sacred a subject to joke about. Finally, what's so hilarious about the truth? Eight years of authoritarian rule could only produce an authoritarian book.

Watching Red Eye tends to produce in foreign viewers who are not familiar with our Athenian-like culture, a tendency to pee directly onto the television screen or take a claw hammer to the boob tube. Don't fall into that trap of hating all of us because Fox News produces more crap than an army on laxatives. The cretins on Red Eye are just that. They laugh at their own half-liners, ending each show with a rousing rendition of erectile dysfunction jokes. Even in the smallest bit of witless humor, signs of autobiography exists. Cue the drum roll and the rimshot please!

I Listen to John McCormack & I'm Not Even Irish

Most of my neighbors in the Greenbush area were old immigrants and spent their time either cooking Old World foods, starring tearfully out of windows, screaming at each other, or listening to long playing records loud enough to shatter windows half a block away. Walking around the neighborhood as a seven year old, I became quite an opera fan, familiar with the tenor voices of Robert Merrill, Jan Peerce, Richard Tucker, Enrico Caruso, Mario Lanza and Lauritz Melchior.

I would knock on doors and invite myself into these airless homes to listen to old scratchy RCA opera recordings; just as the soprano was about to sing a stock number about dying, I would feign hunger pangs and ask for any old dessert that their ungrateful grandchildren had mistakenly left behind during their last hurried visit. Okay the Yiddish word for the day is schnorrer which translates as 'beggar' but I was a kid in a candy store and the grandkids never once missed an extra biscotti, tiramisu, tortoni, cannoli, zeppole, or zabaglione. I paid for my behavior years later with enough cavities to purchase 300 acres of beach front property in Maui for a dental co-op. I was also keeping the old people company, so that has to count for something in heaven.

I heard recordings of Paul Robeson in the "Bush" as well, and I was told he was the world's greatest basso profondo. I thought that meant 'anarchist' since only the most sinister moustache twirlers listened to him. None of these women seemed to ever have men around them. I never came over much to listen to Robeson, since his followers offered me nothing more filling than copies of Emma Goldman speeches to chew on.

But today is St. Patrick's Day so we'll put the Jewish, Italian and Danish tenors back in their sleeve jackets. When I think of classic Irish tenors, the name of John McCormack stands above all others. His voice was heard in the "Bush" as well, but usually in taverns on West Washington Avenue. Beer joints were off limits to a seven-year old, but that was okay with me. Based on what I found in the dumpsters behind these places, most tavern desserts were served with half-smoked cigarette butts stuck in them.

I only began to appreciate John McCormack's voice in college, when an Emmigrant's Daughter with Endearing Young Charms named Colette took this Croppy Boy to The Hills of Connemara and All Through the Night made my Non Irish Eyes Smile. Alright, that line stretches Irish songs way over the edge, but several shots of single malt Glenlivet will do that to a non-drinker like myself. Thank goodness blogging this in a speeding car is still legal on St. Patty's Day.

This excerpt highlighting the stunning voice of John McCormack is from a forgettable 1937 movie (it's mislabeled 1934) entitled Wings of the Morning, starring a very very young Henry Fonda with a very very bad English accent. The beauty he's courting is Annabella, future wife of Tyrone Powers. For all you film buffs out there, Wings of the Morning was the first Technicolor move shot in England. It's still unwatchable.

Happy St. Patty's Day

Fatty Foods and Neighborly Love

Norman McLaren, Canada's greatest animator, won an Oscar for his 1952 study of neighborly love. Spend a leisurely afternoon in between looking for that now elusive job, eh? Kick back a last nourishing LeBatt's before repossession of hearth and home, eh? And enjoy his wonderfully quirky and totally original short pieces, found on any video download site where X does not mark the spot. You need not have the art house maven gene to appreciate McLaren.

I am reminded of his classic pixilation short, "Neighbors," because at this very moment two men in adjoining apartments below me are once again going at it hammer and tong.



I wish my specialty were sitcom writing, but, alas, it is not: It is bad check writing. Throughout my entire life I have been told my sense of humor is no funnier than a burst anal fissure (remind me one day to tell you about my colonoscopy visit), so I am passing along the makings of this idea into the hands of smarter, funnier, and more devious purveyors of the human spirit than myself. Remember me on stage during the Emmy acceptance speech. I'll try not to sue.

My new neighbors are Calab and Cleon. Both moved out here from the Midwest, not to change their names, but with that same wild-eyed crazy kid dream of one day opening up Michelin-rated French restaurants back in their home states. Their first choice, Paris, was financially out of the question for them; however, for people not living out here, the City of Angels is no flash in the frying pan when it comes to eats. LA has some top-tier culinary schools: Otherwise why would we have so many fast food joints with exotic sounding names featuring chicken, lamb, and schnitzel? I told these guys about the cooking schools in Paris, Texas, but they looked at me glaringly and knew right away I was from Wisconsin.

I like both men, for they are completely neurotic about and borderline pathological towards the preparation of food. Even more intriguing, neither future Auguste Escoffier apparently likes the other, although both attend the same food classes. Irony and adjacent apartments brought these two strangers together. As all the cooking shows on cable networks detail, future master chefs are petty, whiney, immature monsters in the making -- more territorial than bull elephants during prom season. Caleb and Cleon dance around each other the way two rival chefs might do when battling for the same floor space at an upscale strip mall. They cook and cook and cook and begrudgingly share recipes with each other. I think it's because their wives demand it.

These early morning sounds are not connected with the construction of the building next door: cutlery crashing on the floor, dishes breaking, and the mournful screams of disgust spoken in French (though one guy is from Nebraska and the other from Kansas). When children fail to do their homework the night before, the rush to prepare for school has a universal language all its own.

This is Los Angeles, where apartments are mandated to have paper-thin walls and faulty window sealant. The distinctive love noises of men in broil, bake or sauté mode are now as recognizable to me as my own more common non-connubial sounds of grunting, groaning and grimacing. The smells wafting upwards from their respective apartments are far more exotic than those found on Hester Street at the turn of the last century. Those fragrances, whenever I smell them, whisk me immediately back to the good old days of Greenbush where all immigrant cooked and spouses fought pitched battles with each other.

Those two lovely wives of Caleb and Cleon – their respective partners, both majoring in online hospitality degrees – make it abundantly clear, in their own passive-aggressive fashion, that each finds the other man's cooking better. I guess this is a motivational technique learned from years of watching telenovelas, though neither women understands Spanish. Did I not say somewhere that this had all the ingredients for a sitcom? Throw in some car chases, fist fights, earthly annihilation and loud music and you have a Bruckheimer comedy. These women apparently love living on the edge. I wonder if there is a dish called "homicide au gratin?"

I'm a sadistic "ho" with no conscience, who eats both ends against the middle – and lately, since the battling chefs have moved into the apartment complex, my middle has expanded exponentially. Several times a week, I'll put on sackcloth and ashes and waddle on downstairs, first to one and then to the other, asking for handouts. Strumming my lute, I make clear to them in my best Oliver Twist, doe-eyed lamentation: "my own gruel be cruel, eight days a week." They never laugh at anything I say, but they do welcome me and my stomach in.



I never have any idea what I'm being served. I just know it's French because half-way through each meal I stand and sing Le Marseillaise, and then reflexively kiss someone on both cheeks. Baeckeoffe, Quiche Lorraine, Magrets de Canard aux cerises, Baked Apricots, Boeuf Bourguignon, Tarte Flambée. My palette is from Wisconsin, so its sophistication level is two floors below mulch. My mom would tell me as a kid when putting food down in front of me, "If it don't make you heave or rush to relieve, then remember bucko, it's free."

Lately after these gluttonous visits, I spend long hours at the computer looking up the recipes to see whether I've broken not only any ancient dietary laws but those federal laws about eating endangered species. If I could only find a woman who could cook like this and humiliate me in front of others, I would be in Crème Patisserie heaven. Then all I would need is a job.

"My Home, My Citizenship, My Burden"

Bill Holm (1943-2009)

Minnesota lost its poet laureate on February 25th. Bill Holm was a literary institution in his home state, as well as in those circles that understand and appreciate a unique subset of American regional poetry: the hardscrabble social radical who takes nourishment from the soil without over-romanticizing those who plow its fields. An imposing figure from Icelandic stock, standing some 6'8", Holm more closely resembled a conquering Viking than a carver of words. While he strode the earth from China to Iceland, he spent most of his writing life sequestered in that part of southwestern Minnesota where Spring fears for its life and Summer waves goodbye from a fast-moving freight train.

Like most great regional writers (a winner of the McKnight Distinguished Artist Award), Holm's thoughts speak a truth far beyond a state's borders. His essay on failure, Uncle Sam-style, should be required reading in every high school classroom that continues to spread saccharin over American studies like a heavy tarp. He who dies with the most toys still dies, and is not any richer for the experience. Holm's poem on the death of Senator Paul Wellstone is a lament for that peace voice cut short while the more sanguinary songstresses continued to bleat out a war beat. For those who have never lived beyond the leaf blower sounds of the urban landscape, his words will feel both foreign and unpretentiously quiet. For those of us who grew up in the cold, flat lands of the Midwest and have drifted away from our roots, his poems and essays are a comforting reminder that those who do go back home again will not find the world so alien after all.

Avatar Hot Boy

I spend hours a day on the computer looking things up, jumping from one link to another and wondering how the world survived without a search engine. The Google is the best little engine that could since my college girlfriend researched and wrote all of my papers during the four years of the Revolution when I was out doing god knows what. I paid her well for keeping me afloat during those turbulent times. At that point in my life, I was young and healthy and my get up and go had not yet gotten up and left. I also still had all of my teeth.

I received a rather strong GPA from all of her efforts; yet that one-sided relationship set in motions years of selfishness and ego-maniacal behavior, for I believed every woman in the world would treat me with such kingly Rush Limbaugh subordination.

Then I woke up and discovered it was a dream, and I have been hugging a very animated adult Chia pet ever since. I still have my college girlfriend's magical Underwood typewriter, just in case the UW ever asks me to prove I did my own papers; she has certain Polaroid’s that the FBI would find interesting to fill out certain archival questions. We haven't exchanged Valentine’s Day cards since Watergate.

I digress, for I have eaten only almonds today. For some odd reason, eating almonds makes me nostalgic. I have no idea why; neither do any of the clinicians I keep on the payroll. Now back to today's subject.

Avatar Hot Boy is the title of today's post. Sounds pornographic, perhaps it should be, but it isn't. Due to ways Google algorithmic spiders work (and don't ask me how because I can't even follow the explanation on Wikipedia myself), typing these three words into the search engine popped my blog up nearly to the top of the list. I know this because a reader from Hanoi did just that recently. The poor guy ended up temporarily looking at all of my swirling pictures of dancing cows, marching bands, Ellis Island immigrants and most importantly, the schematics of the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile before clicking out. I hoped my reader from Hanoi stuck around long enough to play the University of Wisconsin Marching Song.

I had written a post about Avatar: The Last Airbender, several weeks ago, complaining that once more Hollywood was walking down the Charlie Chan route of casting white actors in Asian roles. A live action movie was in the process of pre-production planning and the Asian community was up in arms at some of the major casting choices. Granted the creators of the animated series were white as were most of the primary voice actors, but the cartoon design and story arcs were straight anime, giving off the impression that this was a non-western series. My point was why would Hollywood court a racially insensitive problem it could so easily avoid?

The complete title of the post was Hot Air Bender is still Old Hollywood Gas. Okay, it was a silly sounding title, punning "hot air" with "Hollywood Gas". So sue me for making it as clever as boiling water. The word "Hot" combined with a partial listing of the blog name,Greenbush "Boy", plus the word "Avatar, was enough information for Google to go to town.

But why did he (I presume it is a he) sequence these three words together in the first place? Initially I had no idea. Today he came back again Googling the same three words. This time I did some backtracking on Google links (the closest I will ever get to forensic diddling around), and discovered my visitor was not interested at all in the cartoon series. Even in Hanoi the making of James Cameron's Avatar is news enough to track. My visitor was searching for the latest images of Na'vi, an incandescent blue female (I wonder how you can tell?) that, except for the tail, looked similar to Mystique.

This Avatar design is hot...boy is it hot! Apparently this was one of dozens every teenage boy and man-child thought initially was the alien look for Cameron's decade long in the making sci-fi epic. Well it ain't, because dozens of web sites have their own "this is the true version" of Cameron's vision and none of them are correct. So many of these images are now floating out there in the cold waters of the Internet, they're forming their own icebergs in the North Atlantic and crashing into each other. So my curious friend in Hanoi, keep reading blogs like EW.com, io9.com, First Show.net, or Cinematical, because one of them will eventually hit design pay dirt for you.

This has given me an idea. As a blogger I face millions of others who shoot off their mouths daily for no other reason than they can and someone has been kind enough to make them breakfast. How do I market my blog? Make it visible? Keep people constantly coming back for more? I mean the Wienermobile can travel only so far!

From now on all of my posts will have one or more "hot" words in the title: Porn, Hemorrhoids, Murder, or Implants, for instance. The subject matter will have little if anything to do with the title, a bait and switch technique I first discovered while running for Mister Congeniality in grade school. With provocative keywords like these, who knows who else might stumble onto my blog site? Perhaps even Bin Laden will drop by long enough to stop using Master Chief as his dance instructor and listen to "On Wisconsin".

The Grapes of Wrath are no longer affordable

Henry Fonda and Jane Darwell

"A fellow ain't got a soul of his own, just a little piece of a big soul, the one big soul that belongs to everybody . . . Then it don't matter. I'll be all around in the dark - I'll be everywhere. Wherever you can look - wherever there's a fight, so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever there's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there. I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad. I'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry and they know supper's ready, and when the people are eatin' the stuff they raise and livin' in the houses they build - I'll be there, too."

Tom Joad, "The Grapes of Wrath"

Do today's high school students still study John Steinbeck's, 1939 classic , The Grapes of Wrath, a novel infused with indomitable perseverance, personal sacrifice, and a Christian tenderness towards the truly less fortunate? If not, they should. Given our current financial mess, perhaps they’ll find it stimulating reading while marching from city to city looking for a job.

I remember my dad once telling me that no generation can know how resilient it is until it survives a depression. Wars, he said, come looking for the young every five minutes, but a drop on your knees financial Armageddon like the Great Depression tests the true mettle of the human spirit. While cathartic, pointing a gun at a bank building rather than at an enemy soldier wins you no ground except in a prison yard.

The Bizarro World of Republican political consultants fascinates me for they speak a language of callousness and brass-balled inflexibility towards the poor, the weak and the infirm that would have Jesus picking up the 16 oz gloves. Cloned from tombs rather than born from wombs, these characters spew forth enough foul bilge water on the 24/7 cable news services to inundate most of the fly over country which they swear they speak for. They utter the word "No" more often than the girls I asked out in high school (and college and post college). The "facts" they herald with such impenitent certainty emanate from orifices that only proctologists are licensed to explore.

The current Obama stimulus plan has them harmonizing in tongues. They speak "fat cat" lingo as a Woody Guthrie lament. Their latest appellation of dread is the term “class warfare” as if that's a ballad alien to these shores. According to them, this measure will suddenly pit rich against poor, businessmen against labor, gerunds against dangling participles. The world is coming to an end and non corporate Socialism is just around the corner. These chicks and chicken hawks either know so little about this nation's history or hope none of the viewers do. America is nothing if not a constant train of Credit Mobilier schemes and scandals. In fact we've had more booms and busts in our 200 plus years than an all night Vegas burlesque show.

Who are these lockstep lemmings? Which casting agency recruits them? How long does it take to fill their heads with the same identical talking points? Who pays for their straight teeth and the women's flouncy blouses? And how can they find so many young black Republicans to speak like so many young white Republicans? Questions left unanswered.

They hate everything they personally have themselves and they make a nice living at it. Can anyone believe that these jokers walk around with no medical coverage, for instance? Their invectives against that idea are loud enough to crack off the nose of Mt. Rushmore's Washington. Or that they don't get paid hefty fees by various political action groups or think tanks to run around like well coiffed but highly rabid Ole Yellers (I grant a poor play on words). Perhaps one day after a spirited discussion on said issue, one of the highly paid 24/7 teleprompter readers might ask one of these babbling bloviators which health coverage they have and whether it is a PPO plan or, like for the rest of us, the UFO option.

Wouldn't it be nice if one day all of us had the same benefits as Senator Lindsey Graham and Congressman John Boehner and even Congress’s very own Vampira, Michelle Bachman? They seem to have problems bestowing on the American people the same beneficence afforded them. I wonder if that can be construed as classless warfare.

I will continue to watch the distaff Republican spokespersons. They resemble the type of woman I've only been able to speak to after placing several cool crisp Franklins in their hands. If truth be told, I get turned on by vixens who use enough lip gloss to lubricate truck axles.

Road Kill Words from a Rhodes Scholar

Imagine for a moment that the world has run you over with a forklift. The job is gone; the money has run out. The wife disappeared with the homeless guy down the street. The kids did the right thing and broke into prison.The food on the shelves consists of stale air and untouched dust. The hounds of foreclosure are banging down the door. Time to make the Alamo stand. Your weapon of choice, last year's copy of Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide because, like yourself, it is already obsolete. The door smashes open. The blaggard Javier Bardem, cattle gun drawn, should be standing in front of you.

Instead you see this guy leading the charge:

Bobby Jindal is the Governor of Louisiana. He is also a Rhodes Scholar. He presented the Republican talking points last night after President Obama's speech.

It's amazing that now a personality can be outsourced. Call me old fashioned, but I want a national spokesman from the Planet WTF to have a deep menacing voice, twirl a moustache, walk around in a bulky pin stripe suit carrying a heater, and have a name like Ernst Stavro Blofeld, Sauron, Shere Khan, or Captain Hook. Bobby Jindal sounded like a whiny guy selling ShamWow at 3 AM on Lifetime. He exuded all the compassion of a broken levee. Apparently an angry ex-wife dressed him for the occasion.

Animation, Sergio Leone Style

The Cold Rush by Mikael Lynen, Simon Corbaux, Tristan Urbin and Rémi Certhoux

Once more my win/loss record for choosing Oscar winners ranks me right up there with Napoleon betting against the Russian Winter and Custer's certainty that his Crow scouts were too drunk to have possibly seen so many Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho Indians playing canasta along the Little Bighorn. I was so depressed at my lack of prowess to understand the Academy that I fell into a deep funk, which should not be confused with Deep Purple or Grand Funk. Not even an abbreviated audio reading of The Reader helped my mood.

In search of a quick pick-me-up, I did a Google search for Chaplin's The Gold Rush. What a slap your knee, barrel of fun that movie is! I especially love the scene where The Little Tramp cooks his last pair of shoes to avoid starvation. Looking longingly into my closet, I knew that I would be able to weather the hardships of this recession, although I'm not certain penny loafers are as nutritious and rich in Niacin and Vitamin B12 as my steel-tipped hiking boots.

But I missed The Gold Rush by one Ramos Gin Fizz-slapped key, stumbling instead upon The Cold Rush, a visually stunning piece of perverse storytelling that had me laughing and dancing and calling up ex-girlfriends to ask if they remembered me. The ending is straight spaghetti western, those words keying my lust to hunt up a frozen cannoli and an excuse to cue the finest opening movie score outside of a Bond movie.