Winky Dink

Warning:Turn down the sound if you are annoyed by really bad country songs. Although... it does add to the tacky spectacle of it all.


Cutesy slang and flirty facial quirks. That's all you got? She's a prop. Yay, America!

In Case You Missed It

On Countdown With Keith Olbermann last night... a look back at this historic, maddening primary season. It's hilarious! In my opinion, Mr. Olbermann is the best thing on T.V. right now. No, I don't watch American Idol. Or So You Think You Can Dance. Or any of the shows many seem to watch these days. Here's an idea: Watch more shows like Olbermann's and less mindless crap. Wait, that was mean. I do have my own mindless crap shows...mostly on Food Network. That's my guilty television secret. Anyway, enjoy...

Public Service

Listen, I don't particularly like looking at his mug on my blog anymore than you do. I consider it my duty as a citizen and a blogger to remind people who the republican nominee is. Often, until the general election. There~you've been forewarned. Apologies in advance if the images upset or repulse you. They should.

It's All Bullshit & It's Bad For Ya

Warning: Foul Language Abounds*

*George loves droppin' the f-bomb! I happen to be one who isn't offended by such things. In fact, I have been known to drop it myself. Sometimes it just feels good. I recall my first clear memory of my dad saying "fuck!" We were cruising down Bay St. (at the foot of the Hyde Street hill) in the city, and a driver must have really unnerved him. He had this special way of annunciating the letter "K," which gave it that special flair. This is a man who was a dean of San Francisco State University for thirty-three years. (Yes, even academics swear!)

To me, there are so many traits that are worse than swearing. But that's just me, and I am odd.
Admittedly.

We really had a great evening.

Monkey To Man

Consider this:
Last week, at end of the working day. Me-refilling my water bottle for the 1.5 mile walk home. In strolls one of the network dudes. I say something about the California primary energy really picking up. He says: "You must take all of that fairly seriously" I tell him that if seriously means that I am paying attention, then yes. Also that I had voted in every presidential election since 1976, when I voted for (guess who?)

I told him I hoped Hillary wouldn't win here. He said he thought she probably would. I say he shouldn't count Obama out yet. He looks mortified, and proclaims that he'd never vote for him, strictly because of his middle and last names.This isn't Oklahoma, mind you. It's Nor Cal. And this young man is a well-paid, college-educated, very savvy network guy. I was stunned. The walk home felt really good that day.

People sure do scare me sometimes. No wonder I hide away more and more.
Take it, Declan.

You KNOW It's Rigged !

Thank Goddess For Morford

It's Friday! Lots of applesauce to be made this weekend. And apple pies.

I love this season. It's been just grand.

Our new kitten has brought us great joy. We're thinking "Ella."

I know, it's wimpy to snag other's words and slap them up here. It's just... they say so much.
In Mark Morford's case, he goes where too few dare. That's necessary in my world.
I wish I could do what he does--- force us look at ourselves, warts-and-all.

The ever-present and understandable and yet still rather whiny complaint goes something like this:

Dear (SFGate/Chronicle/horribly biased corporate media outlet du jour): Hey, why the hell don't you people feature more serious news on your front page? Why do you always insist on highlighting the latest trash diva slut whore celeb meltdown rehab tale over more dire and heady and serious fare, like, say, the repulsive story of those BushCo-sucking Blackwater thugs killing innocent people in Iraq as the company's chief executive smirks at Congress and actually defends his reckless goon squads?

Enough with the pop culture trash! Enough with the Lohans and the Hiltons and Jessica Biel's admittedly amazing ass! Let's have some solemn news, real coverage of real events for real people because goddammit it's a serious world out there and we need serious stories so serious people can analyze them all and furrow their brows and scowl and by the way Britney was totally awful on the VMAs and I'm pretty sure she had a boob job. Thank you.

It is, I must say, a common refrain. And it is, I agree, a bit of a conundrum, one faced by nearly every media outlet in the world, given how (to use the above example) the Blackwater story is indeed fascinating and brutal and bespeaks of a particularly nasty, largely unreported aspect of Bush's bleak war machine, despite how only a handful of (very serious) readers bothered to click on that story to read beyond the headline as it sat atop the SFGate home page for much of the day, craving attention.

But then there's this: The moment the "Britney loses custody of her kids" story went up on our site, the mad swarm of clicks it instantly received made the Blackwater story seem like, well, like a Home&Garden feature on do-it-yourself mulch. Which is to say, the damnable thing was so insanely popular, so flooded with clicks, it nearly crashed our servers. So, you know, a big slap of hypocrisy all around, yes?

No matter. I am not here to engage in the intractable and rather futile debate regarding the importance of "serious" news versus pop culture chyme. I am not here to analyze the newsroom decision-making process, or talk about click-through rates or advertiser happiness or just how the hell modern media is supposed to survive/make any money/stay relevant in the new and meta-jaded millennium.

I am here to suggest an adjustment. I am here to suggest a flip of the lens, a torque of the perspective, a donning of the funky hat that lets you tap into, for lack of a better word, and at the risk of causing widespread sneering among the uptight and the rigid, the vibration of things, the energy output, the hum and thrum and light.

Let us step back one cosmic inch, and look again at these two lovely and happily repulsive examples of news drudgery that recently invaded your brain-space and stabbed at your wary heart: Blackwater and Britney, thugs versus trash, death and violence and war versus shallow dumb millionaire diva. Hmm. What a choice.

Let us hold them up to the light. Let us turn them around and see how they refract, how they feel in the palm, the weight and balance and heft and how they might match up with that otherworldly sensation you sometimes feel when you take a deep breath on a warm night and close your eyes and for just a split second feel you could actually lift off the ground.

Do you see? It turns out, from a purely vibrational and energetic perspective, these two stories are both almost exactly the same. Which is to say: Remove the sordid details and strip out the radically different aspects of the world they inhabit and look solely at the engines that drive them, and you will find they are of the exact same construction: bleak, and low, and mean, and happily lethal to your wary heart.

It's true. To wallow in the dregs and pain and misery of one is to be mauled and humiliated and deeply saddened by the other, and if your very soul was drugged and blindfolded and dragged into an alley and beaten senseless by both and then the blindfold was whipped off and they were both standing there, bloody and stupid and grinning like hyenas, well, you would have a hell of a time deciding which one did what.

Oh, oh, but wait, you might argue, the Blackwater goons actually killed innocent people, have done serious damage to America's already miserable military reputation, are adding a particularly vicious and unsavory dimension to a bogus war already riddled with so many lies and deceptions it makes Vietnam look downright clean and tidy. This is serious. People have died.

Yes, this is true. And it can all feel very dire indeed. But again, let us drop down. Get out of the head, slip into the heart, slip down to the soul, where (the poets tell us) the meanings are. War and violence are, without doubt, some of the lowest, least helpful vibrations on this earthly plane. To engage in them, to sit in them, is to actively devolve and be dragged back into the most primitive pits of human potential. Easy enough.

Can you very nearly say the same for the hollowness of the dregs of pop culture, especially when you consider how much time, energy, money and effort we as a culture spend on cataloguing and critiquing and obsessing over it? Is it fair to say they are both savage and silly poisons, and we are infatuated by both to a degree that our nation has lot a great deal of its identity to them? I am here to suggest the possibility that, hell yes, you absolutely can.

Let us be clear. This is not to say some issues are not more grim and dangerous and more deserving of attention, compassion, or even political response than others. This is not to say, on the scale of quick moral judgment, war is not somehow more depressingly profound than stupid pop singers and their horrible parenting skills. Nor is this some sort of suggestion that you disengage from the media world and throw your hands up in disgust and change your name to Rainforest and start a hemp farm in the Netherlands.

It is merely a reminder that there is more than one way to measure the weight and value and deeper importance of the stories we tell ourselves. It is merely a way to look at the headlines racing across the media landscape on a given day, and maybe, on occasion, let your eyes soften and your cynicism pause and your cosmic wisdom open wide, where you can see the great, often bleak, always curious cosmic circus of it all. Or, barring that, just try that breathing thing again.