Thursday, September 28, 2006
Famous hairdos and civic duty
On my commute to work today, it occurred to me that a certain Senator from New York, a certain world-famous English soccer player and a certain Swedish chemical engineer-turned-action star all sport the same haircut, although the first two are prone to frequent hairstyle changes. Anyway, have a look:
The brain (or at least my brain) certainly conjures up strange things in the early morning.
While googling the aforementioned haircuts, I discovered that the 2004 Dolph Lundrgen joint "The Defender" co-starred Jerry Springer as The President of the United States. WTF? How did I not hear about this until now? The Defender has thusly been added to my Netflix queue. It's also worth mentioning that Dolph's character's name is Lance Rockford.
In actual news, there are now fewer than forty days until the 2004 elections. If you're not registered to vote, what is wrong with you? Are you too busy? Too busy to help save our dying republic? Turn off the Everybody Loves Raymond marathon on TBS and contact your local county clerk. And while you're at it, click here.
The brain (or at least my brain) certainly conjures up strange things in the early morning.
While googling the aforementioned haircuts, I discovered that the 2004 Dolph Lundrgen joint "The Defender" co-starred Jerry Springer as The President of the United States. WTF? How did I not hear about this until now? The Defender has thusly been added to my Netflix queue. It's also worth mentioning that Dolph's character's name is Lance Rockford.
In actual news, there are now fewer than forty days until the 2004 elections. If you're not registered to vote, what is wrong with you? Are you too busy? Too busy to help save our dying republic? Turn off the Everybody Loves Raymond marathon on TBS and contact your local county clerk. And while you're at it, click here.
Saturday, September 23, 2006
One trustworthy politician
Having found myself in Joliet on Friday, I had the opportunity to see Barack Obama speak in a small gymnasium at the University of St. Francis. I know that the "rock star" superlative is employed far too often when describing public reaction to Obama, but damned if it isn't true. Case in point: he received a standing ovation merely for entering the room. He hadn't spoken a single word and everyone was on their feet, clapping wildly and whistling. Once the applause dissipated, the Junior Senator from Illinois gave a brief opening speech and then opened up the floor to questions. He discussed health care and labor unions, government spending and Medicare. My favorite moments: when speaking of labor unions, he mentioned that some middle class people like to forget that many of the workplace luxuries they now enjoy (a forty-hour work week and the weekend, for instance) came as a result of organized labor; while discussing the new Medicare prescription drug plan, Obama used the phrase "I don't want to go off on a tangent"; and when someone tried to compare government corruption in Africa to that in Chicago, Obama made the guy look like a fool, albeit in a suave, somewhat friendly way, by basically saying that there's absolutely no similarity between the two.
In summary, yes, Obama is extremely polished. He is media-savvy, and, to drudge up an unfortunate word from 2004, he oozes Electability. The good news is that his substance outweighs his style. The guy is intelligent, articulate, and simply likeable. More than one person I talked to compared him to either Bobby or John Kennedy. He is that seemingly too-good-to-be-true populist that progressives have been waiting for. I only hope that he has the chance to meet all of the expectations that have been placed upon him.
My guess is that he will not run for President in 2008. He's got too much to take care of in Congress before he can do that.
This week's question: In 2015, when Obama and Bono go head to head for World Chancellor, will we refer to the latter as 'Bono' or 'Paul Hewson'?
I now have a job. I will refrain from writing about it until I know that it doesn't suck and/or involve selling killer robot insurance to frightened old people.
Finally, I saw Alpana Singh, host of Check, Please at the Borders on State Street. She is stylish and short.
In summary, yes, Obama is extremely polished. He is media-savvy, and, to drudge up an unfortunate word from 2004, he oozes Electability. The good news is that his substance outweighs his style. The guy is intelligent, articulate, and simply likeable. More than one person I talked to compared him to either Bobby or John Kennedy. He is that seemingly too-good-to-be-true populist that progressives have been waiting for. I only hope that he has the chance to meet all of the expectations that have been placed upon him.
My guess is that he will not run for President in 2008. He's got too much to take care of in Congress before he can do that.
This week's question: In 2015, when Obama and Bono go head to head for World Chancellor, will we refer to the latter as 'Bono' or 'Paul Hewson'?
I now have a job. I will refrain from writing about it until I know that it doesn't suck and/or involve selling killer robot insurance to frightened old people.
Finally, I saw Alpana Singh, host of Check, Please at the Borders on State Street. She is stylish and short.
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
Terrorism, empty gestures and other facts of life in the 21st Century
Last week’s happenings in the Loop are a testament to exactly how absurd Life During Wartime can be in the USA. The powers that be in Chicago organized a mock disaster drill to take place between the hours of 9am and 7pm in various parts of downtown. Now maybe I’m expecting too much from the city’s Office of Emergency Management and Communication, but if I were planning a disaster drill, it would most certainly include the following:
1) Children lying on the ground in mock post-WMD agony
2) Frantic men in full hazmat suits
3) At least a shred of urgency, if not full-on hysteria
In short, I want a total Delilloian “airborne toxic event” type scene.
(Use of the term ‘Delilloian’, by the way, comes courtesy of my esteemed colleague Lloyd Prince.)
Wacker Drive between Adams and Madison were scheduled to be shut down at 3:30, and hundreds of pre-selected office workers in identical "Alert Chicago" white t-shirts were to evacuate their buildings and make their way westward on Madison and away from the imaginary disaster in a calm and orderly fashion starting at 4pm. And if this entire staged event was anything, it was calm and orderly. It was so calm in fact that it was completely without consequence. How, I ask, do people slowly walking in matching t-shirts and having water bottles handed to them by volunteers like it was some kind of goddamned 5K Fun Run while scores of cops look on and bullshit with each other prepare anyone for a possible terrorist attack or natural disaster? The only thing that seemed to be accomplished is that some cops got to block off three blocks of a major city street during rush hour and park their cars in total flashing light, small town badassness while the local news affiliates had an excuse hung out and smoked cigarettes. In typically American fashion, the disaster preparedness drill turned out to be another empty gesture and extreme waste of time and taxpayer money. God forbid, if some sort of catastrophic event were to occur in Chicago, last Friday’s events would have done absolutely nothing in preparing us for it.
If nothing else, the local media had the fake nothing well covered. The spectacle is alive and well, my friends.
Speaking of empty gestures, Monday of course marked the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. The marketing wizards behind the 9/11-remembrance campaign tell us that we will never forget. Yes, we will. We already have begun to forget. Except for those directly affected – families of victims, first-responders with future health problems, those living in the vicinity – we will forget. In fact, many have already forgotten, except for in the most empty and superficial way. The next thing you know, 9/11 or Patriot Day or whatever people call it will be celebrated in the same manner as all other American holidays: with overeating, drunkenness and shopping.
This week: I am working through a temp agency for a company that a law firm has outsourced to more or less run their building operations. I don’t know either.
Current distractions
Movies/TV: Little Miss Sunshine, Mr. Show
Music: The Eraser by Thom Yorke, The Warning by Hot Chip
Reading: Glamorama by Bret Easton Ellis, Chicago ’68 by David Farber
1) Children lying on the ground in mock post-WMD agony
2) Frantic men in full hazmat suits
3) At least a shred of urgency, if not full-on hysteria
In short, I want a total Delilloian “airborne toxic event” type scene.
(Use of the term ‘Delilloian’, by the way, comes courtesy of my esteemed colleague Lloyd Prince.)
Wacker Drive between Adams and Madison were scheduled to be shut down at 3:30, and hundreds of pre-selected office workers in identical "Alert Chicago" white t-shirts were to evacuate their buildings and make their way westward on Madison and away from the imaginary disaster in a calm and orderly fashion starting at 4pm. And if this entire staged event was anything, it was calm and orderly. It was so calm in fact that it was completely without consequence. How, I ask, do people slowly walking in matching t-shirts and having water bottles handed to them by volunteers like it was some kind of goddamned 5K Fun Run while scores of cops look on and bullshit with each other prepare anyone for a possible terrorist attack or natural disaster? The only thing that seemed to be accomplished is that some cops got to block off three blocks of a major city street during rush hour and park their cars in total flashing light, small town badassness while the local news affiliates had an excuse hung out and smoked cigarettes. In typically American fashion, the disaster preparedness drill turned out to be another empty gesture and extreme waste of time and taxpayer money. God forbid, if some sort of catastrophic event were to occur in Chicago, last Friday’s events would have done absolutely nothing in preparing us for it.
If nothing else, the local media had the fake nothing well covered. The spectacle is alive and well, my friends.
Speaking of empty gestures, Monday of course marked the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. The marketing wizards behind the 9/11-remembrance campaign tell us that we will never forget. Yes, we will. We already have begun to forget. Except for those directly affected – families of victims, first-responders with future health problems, those living in the vicinity – we will forget. In fact, many have already forgotten, except for in the most empty and superficial way. The next thing you know, 9/11 or Patriot Day or whatever people call it will be celebrated in the same manner as all other American holidays: with overeating, drunkenness and shopping.
This week: I am working through a temp agency for a company that a law firm has outsourced to more or less run their building operations. I don’t know either.
Current distractions
Movies/TV: Little Miss Sunshine, Mr. Show
Music: The Eraser by Thom Yorke, The Warning by Hot Chip
Reading: Glamorama by Bret Easton Ellis, Chicago ’68 by David Farber
Friday, September 01, 2006
Fake Plastic Politicians
Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, who will surely be on the Republican Presidential ticket in 2008, made a statement today in which he referred to stem-cell research as "Orwellian."
The quote: "I believe it crosses a very bright moral line to take sperm and eggs in the laboratory and start creating human life. It is Orwellian in its scope. In laboratories you could have trays of new embryos being created."
As anyone who has actually read Orwell can tell you, nowhere in his books including 1984 (which I assume Romney thinks he's referencing), does Orwell talk about cloning or genetically modified people. 1984 strictly deals with a dystopian future based entirely on totalitarian government, and not science gone awry. For now, we can give Romney the benefit of the doubt and assume he meant to make a comparison with Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Otherwise, it would seem that he's warping the meaning of the word 'Orwellian' to his own ends. And that's a truly Orwellian thing to do.
Romney, by the way, looks like the wax museum version of the Manchurian Candidate.
US Governor or paid actor?
In the event that Mitt Romney and John Kerry win their party's primaries in 2008, I propose new criteria for deciding the election. Instead of voting, the guy with the least Botox in his face should be declared the winner.
For now, I'll refrain from commenting on the stem-cell research issue and instead leave that to The Onion, which has the best statement on the matter: "If God wanted to cure or treat diseases affecting 100 million people, he would've put a sane person in the Oval Office."
The quote: "I believe it crosses a very bright moral line to take sperm and eggs in the laboratory and start creating human life. It is Orwellian in its scope. In laboratories you could have trays of new embryos being created."
As anyone who has actually read Orwell can tell you, nowhere in his books including 1984 (which I assume Romney thinks he's referencing), does Orwell talk about cloning or genetically modified people. 1984 strictly deals with a dystopian future based entirely on totalitarian government, and not science gone awry. For now, we can give Romney the benefit of the doubt and assume he meant to make a comparison with Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Otherwise, it would seem that he's warping the meaning of the word 'Orwellian' to his own ends. And that's a truly Orwellian thing to do.
Romney, by the way, looks like the wax museum version of the Manchurian Candidate.
US Governor or paid actor?
In the event that Mitt Romney and John Kerry win their party's primaries in 2008, I propose new criteria for deciding the election. Instead of voting, the guy with the least Botox in his face should be declared the winner.
For now, I'll refrain from commenting on the stem-cell research issue and instead leave that to The Onion, which has the best statement on the matter: "If God wanted to cure or treat diseases affecting 100 million people, he would've put a sane person in the Oval Office."
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