THURSDAY MARINE LAYER

I wish I could tell you, dear readers, that there is some compelling, mysterious, sexy reason for my absence. I've felt your pining- just as one proton simultaneously responds to its sister proton's oscillations, I also cannot help but be affected by your collective emotional state. I feel your longing. It's time to return to public life.

Enough nonsense. Let's debrief.

It's been a busy week. Where to start? How about nowhere in particular?

The Retirement Of  Larry King.

Finally. This man is one of the most over-rated television 'personalities' to ever foul up the airwaves. Talk about wasting a public platform. Just another reason I adore Rachel Maddow- her arrival on MSNBC assisted in accelerating the decline of Larry's already dismal ratings. There is only room for one old, decrepit Jewish man on television- me in 30 years. But I'm getting ahead of myself. What will CNN do with the 9pm timeslot? As it stands, their current team of anchors (Fareed Zakaria excepted- his show GPS is one of the smartest and most understated in cable news)  makes Fox's people look like Nobel laureates. I have some ideas:

• To Catch A Predator 6 featuring Larry King - MSNBC and CNN team up to follow Larry as he looks for his next wife.
• CNN Smackdown! - Anderson Cooper, Wolf Blitzer, Campbell Brown, John King and the rest of the drones  have to wrestle for the right to stay at the network. In a janitorial position.
• Diff'rent Strokes Reunion Hour - The guy who played Willis performs monologs for 60 minutes.

• Queer Eye For The Straight Guy - Anderson Cooper moves in with Wolf Blitzer, gives him a shave and a wax, plies him with Cosmos and E and eventually turns him. Ratings soar, Anderson is excommunicated from the gay community and Wolf lands the lead in a Broadway revival of Gypsy.

 Le Bron James' Free Agency Adventure


I have an idea. It may not be legal, but at this point I don't give a hoot. It's called collusion. Why don't we collectively decide, as a society, to do something better with our money than giving gobs of it to monosyllabic, egomaniacal, misogynistic young men whose greatest contribution to our community is throwing a large rubber sphere through a steel rim attached to a frilly little white net?
Enough already. NBA owners: take the hundreds of millions you're going to throw at all these free agents and spend it on funding for arts schools in poor and working class neighbourhoods. Maybe we can start affirming that poor black kids are good for something other than enriching sporting teams. As for the rest of us, let's leave the stadiums empty and the TV off for a year and seek other forms of entertainment. More lovemaking will occur, novels will be written, museums will fill up again and just maybe the oil will get cleaned up.

 General McChrystal Got Fired

Aaah... very original, Mr.President. David Petraeus. Never saw that one coming. Of course McChrystal had to be fired. Reminds me of the time the woman I was seeing told all our friends that I was a lousy lay. Too fast, she said. Okay, number one: in the words of Christopher Durang, wanting sex to take a long time is sick. Second, as I explained to every single friend, once I'd hunted down all 472 that my then girlfriend called,  in matters of sex I am not "fast"- I am efficient. If my lovers need more time to get their work done, that's not my problem.
But I divagate. The point here is that this guy slagged off his boss in a public forum and had to go. As far as his replacement... why is it that we hire generals to oversee these campaigns? If Obama really wants to end matters over there, shouldn't he put someone in charge who doesn't have a strong vested interest in seeing it continued? It is simple logic which suggests that military folk, especially those who have been entrenched in that arena for decades, have little interest in a genuine, lasting peace. Wouldn't that mean they'd all be out of a job?

For a coherent analysis of the actual situation confronting us in Afghanistan, read Bob Herbert's op-ed this week in the New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/26/opinion/26herbert.html?_r=1&ref=bobherbert

As the old Vietnam anti-war slogan goes:

"Fighting for peace is like fucking for chastity."

Amen.

Tea Partiers Are Idiots

Yes, I know that title is reductive, it's judgemental, it's simplistic and it's absolutely spot on.

Having said that, early members of an emerging Nazi Party may have been called similar names by the very people they ended up carting away in trains, so we should treat this sub-sector of our society with a little care. I don't believe for a second that this fringe element has increased markedly in number- the real problem here is that it has found a way to legitimize itself and therefore has a heightened capability to attract the lesser-educated and bigoted among us who, in spite of their limitations (limitations often placed on them due to conditioning by parents and their immediate environment), would otherwise have made more rational political choices. It's up to the media in addition to all of us to correct lies and false propaganda when we come into contact with it; unfortunately, most of the corporate media is all too ready to embrace the neanderthalic grunting of Tea Party candidates as educated discourse. Luckily, ladies and gentleman, enter Chris Matthews, of Hardball fame:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/01/chris-matthews-grills-ric_n_632139.html

Enjoy.

The World Cup

I have had it with the dives. These fellows, when lightly tapped by an opponent, behave as if there is well-aimed sniper fire coming from the stands, finding a home in the middle of their rippled torsos. I haven't seen this much useless, shameful, shambolic diving since BP last tried to fix the leak. It must stop. I suggest a new colour coding system: the Pink Card. If these fellows like falling to the ground in hysterical tears so much, upon receiving the Pink Card they will be suspended, bound and gagged and forced to watch Fried Green Tomatoes and Steel Magnolias over and over again, without sleep, until they see the error of their ways. Problem solved.

Trust me. I know all about falling to the ground, overcome with deep, convulsing sobs.

My team is Australia.

Enough said.

Pictures, from top:  Larry King, public menace.
                          Petraeus... awful hair.
                               A gargantuan tea cup rocket that will carry away all bigots and oil company executives.
                               Another soccer player shot in the back. Tragic.