I'm Concerned

I'm concerned. Dolly went too far. What happened to the rustic American values my "Coat of Many Colors" girl possessed? She started her career with "Dumb Blonde" and now she's released an album called"Backwoods Barbie?" I'm worried, people. A world where Dolly Parton looks like a melted Loni Anderson is no world for this country girl!

All Hail

If you only read one thing about Obama and this moment in American politics, read this.

Screw JFK..... We Need Another Jackie

My friend Frank pointed out that in Barack's response to the SOTU, his suit looked very .... 1960. I agree, but to me it's been Michelle Obama who has been dressing straight outta Jackie's closet all along. Check her look below as compared to a normal, non retro-flagger..... paging Oleg Cassini!



I mean, the flip hairdo, the 60's cut dresses and suits and most of all..... the triple strand of pearls - come on!

Barack Obama's Response To The State of The Union

One of Them is Sweet

Rudy looks like someone... wait, wait.... I know who it is .....

I Finally Get Why People Hate The Clintons So Much

I feel pretty thick for taking so long. Many of my smarter and better informed heroes, including Sullivan, have (of course) been on it all along. Sullivan never misses an opportunity to bring up Ricky Ray Rector, the death-row inmate who was so brain-damaged that he tried to save the pecan pie at his last meal, so he could eat it after his execution. Bill Clinton famously alllowed Rector's execution to go forward on the eve of a primary, even returning to Arkansas to be there when he died. Obviously the information that the Clintons were people of dubious character was available to me. But like a lot of other people, I chose to believe - I took it on faith, really - that whatever sleazy things the Clintons did to win, there was a core of morality there. I believed, and I still believe, that the internecine war of politics is largely unknowable to outsiders. That there is an endless moral labyrinth of deals and quid pro quos which make it almost impossible to know the truth about who is doing what for whom, and who is on the side of justice. Anyway, I gave the Clintons an essential pass. I saw flagrant abuses of power and distasteful behavior, like pardoning Marc Rich, but I didn't believe they were the heartless operators the right insisted they were. However, Bill Clinton's comments at the occasion of Obama's SC win, comparing him to the extremely questionable Jesse Jackson, make it impossible not to see them for what they are - a pair of utter cynics - who will do or say anything, ANYTHING, that serves their self-interest. Hillary initially lost my vote after she lost Iowa, when she suddenly deployed Bill Shaheen, the husband of New Hampshire's former governor, to infer that Barack Obama was a drug dealer. At that moment, I could no longer envision voting for her, because I couldn't deny the fundamentally racist nature of that inference. Not to mention the fact that she and Bill were exploiting Obama's candor and courage by flatly admitting in his autobiography that he, like almost everyone else who goes to college, did a few drugs there. No other politician of my lifetime has been so real about drugs. You can read about the Shaheen smear here along with a truly astonishing quote from civil rights activist and ex-Atlanta major Andrew Young. Anyway, Bill's Jesse Jackson comments seem to have pissed off a lot of people.

Return of the Rat

I am back! I had to abandon my blog for a couple of years, because I was working at a celebrity PR firm. I didn't feel I could comment in an uncensored way on pop culture while I was there, because of the reach of my firm's clients and their extended relationships. For example, in Country Music Video Roundup #1 With Tris and Charles, we made fun of Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora and their chicklet-like teeth- little did we know that just a few months later I would be working at the firm which represented them! Anyway I have left all that glamour behind now and returned to boho-land so I can freely note and mock what I want. It's funny, though, how being forced to read People, Us, In Touch, Star, OK!, Perez Hilton and the like every day destroyed my interest in doing so. It's kinda like how working at a punk label turned me into a Robbie WIlliams / Oasis superfan... Anyway, this post is just to say HI, and I'M BACK, BITCHES. In the words of Portland's greatest band, The Wipers, it's the RETURN OF THE RAT!

Vote for Frank

My friend Frank's book, King Dork, has been nominated for a Quill Award. There's online voting, so please vote for it now. It's in the Teen/Young Adult section, and you can also vote it Book of the Year. While you're at it, please vote for my client and friend Lane Smith, who you may know from his classic, "The Stinky Cheese Man." His book, "John, Paul, George & Ben" is nominated for Best Illustrated Children's Book.

Better Than JonBenet, Yes, That Good

1996 was a bad year for me. You know how you look back on the last year of a long, failed relationship, and, in hindsight, the entire year just should've been lopped off like a gangrenous toe? Well, that's what 1996 was for me. It was the skid marks *after* the lumberjack disrobes. I mean, how much could one woman take? But on December 26, 1996, a date that shall live in infamy, my attention was momentarily diverted from the domestic nightmare which had entombed me. Little JonBenet. Her death was tragic, but seeing as how I am an American and all, I used it as a delectable opiate to avoid my life for hours on end. Who did it? Was it Mom, Dad, or Burke? Did the pageants point to a darker inner life, and if so, were all baby-pageant people pervy? Why was the note written from a pad in the home? Why was the glass inconsistent with a break-in? And what about the magic number, $118,000? I have gone back to suckle on this scandalous milkshake at every opportunity, reading the books, watching the specials, engaging in long, drunken discussions with my friend Erika. If my enthusiastic spectatorship was tasteless and ultimately disrespectful, I apologize. To...whomever. I needed it at the time. But now that it's 10 years later, and we have this Ed Grimley nutjob emerging from his $170.00/month Thai sex hotel to tell every camera in sight that he did it, that he loved her, and that he had sex with her, I can't really stomach it. I hope that I am a better person, but maybe it's just that my own bummer avoidance abilities are diminshed. It's called "growing up" and "needing anti-depressants" and "experiencing life as though you were a lobster headed towards that final swim on the stove." And as a direct result, I don't get as much satisfaction from the garish parade on TV. Don't get me wrong, I am still in the Lower Ninth Ward - there is no higher ground in this scenario. When I read Andrea Peyser's unbelievably caustic column in the New York Post, "Doomed By Ma and Pa's Sick Ambition," I knew I didn't have the heart to follow the story anymore. And fortunately, I don't have to. There is a way, way, way better story beginning to surface, one that we can all agree preys neither upon 6-year-old girls, nor upon Jews via a post-Moonshadows muttering Mad Max. We have THE HYBRID MUTANT. The Hybrid Mutant is a win-win. It's a real life monster. Plus, he's already dead, so you aren't gonna hurt his feelings. The next time your life is making you think seriously about sprinting toward that rainbow bridge in the sky, just give the Hybrid Mutant a try. He has blue lips. Nobody knows what he is. And he is REAL!!!