I hate to see a good book end

Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Marriage Plot was my big read during my late-summer vacation. I was taken by the various trials and dilemmas of recent college graduate Madeleine, a literature student who had turned to traditional romantic novels at a time in the ‘80s when deconstruction was all the rage. She marries the depressed Leonard in a fit of romanticism but later finds that as her husband had advocated to her, love is an illusion. After Leonard abandons Madeleine and her ex Mitchell returns, to her credit, rather than accept the romanticism of an old flame’s return, she opts for a third way: Independence. The characters are a thoughtful embodiment of the Jane Austen-Jacques Derrida axis of literature. I enjoyed this book, although it wasn’t as towering as Eugenides’ Middlesex.

American Wife was a barely veiled fictionalization of the life of Laura Bush. I’m not sure how many of the details are true but the hints are there: Alice Blackwell is a librarian who marries a party boy from a rich family who buys a baseball team and later finds God, serves two terms as president and gets involved in a war in Iraq. Alice’s character is compelling and sympathetic on her own, regardless of how much she may or may not resemble the former first lady in details that are ultimately unknowable. The central tension in Curtis Sittenfeld’s novel is the conflict between Alice’s closely held liberal beliefs and the degree to which she is culpable for standing by while her husband pursued policies that her conscience rejected. This is a fascinating look into the compromises any couple makes in a marriage and in the first couple’s situation, there is the nagging feeling that the things they sublimated for the other will come back to haunt them.

In the midst of planning a wedding, it was enlightening to read Dan Savage’s account of his own reluctant nuptials, The Commitment. In contrast to Savage, I never needed to be convinced that marriage was the best course for our relationship. This book was mostly about his thought process and how he allowed himself to be convinced. He wrote this several years ago and from that perspective, things looked pretty dire for the prospects for gay marriage, a reminder of the sea change that’s taken place in half a decade.

Video Slut was diverting. Sharon Oreck dished on the details of producing videos for many an ‘80s musical icon. I wasn’t that interested in Oreck’s interludes of her personal life, so I skipped those. It was much more entertaining to read how a terrified Madonna jumped screaming off a high dive for the “Like a Prayer” video or how they had to make purple woolen bikini briefs for Prince to keep his junk warm in a bathtub during the shooting of “When Doves Cry.” Oreck wrote with an exaggerated style that might make you call into question the exact details of her stories but she's so entertaining, you don't really care if she's telling a tall tale.

Don DeLillo’s short story collection, The Angel Esmeralda, was just OK. I found a lot of the stories to be unmemorable. The exception was the title story, which stood head and shoulders above everything else. It’s the story of two nuns in the Bronx who try to befriend 12-year-old Esmeralda, who is later raped and thrown off a building. Esmeralda then briefly becomes a posthumous religious touchstone as people begin seeing a vision of her on a billboard. It was a deeply moving way of depicting a character like the elderly Sister Edgar, who had become beaten down before the vision of a murdered 12-year-old restored some of her faith.

Reading "The Angel Esmeralda" inspired me to re-read the novel of which the story was part, DeLillo’s Underworld. This is my all-time favorite. I read it over 10 years ago and while so much of the book’s sweeping, poetic narrative has stayed with me, how much I remembered very specific turns of phrase, I was surprised at how much I forgot. Underworld has a tremendous scope, covering the entire Cold War, and I guess if I had to tell someone what it’s about, I’d say it’s about how what we try to bury will always resurface.

Underworld is 827 pages and now I’m about to tackle another doorstop, Anna Karenina. I like reading big books and I recently realized why: Because when it’s a really good book, I hate to see it end.

Flipping back and forth between 'Monday Night Football' and 'Liz and Dick'

You know the state of the Eagles is a mess when instead of watching a Monday night game in full, I decide to flip between the game and the Lifetime movie Liz and Dick, with Lindsay Lohan trying to act her way out of a paper bag as Elizabeth Taylor. Both the game and the movie were a demoralizing disaster, barely appreciable on a serious or ironic level. Both were a shadow of their former selves. I knew all this going in but hey, what else was I going to do on a Monday night?

To start with on Lifetime, there’s Lindsay, made up to look like Liz. They actually almost pull it off and her makeup doesn’t look too bad. I can almost see Taylor in a few shots. Lohan’s voice, however, is flat and hoarse, a far cry from Taylor’s sort of breathy sound. First, she and Richard Burton are being interviewed while sitting in director’s chairs, wearing all black in a black room. I’m assuming it’s all a profound metaphor for death. Then the two cavort on the set of Cleopatra. The scenes are edited so fast I am getting whiplash.

The Eagles-Panthers game is already in progress when I flip over, in no hurry to get there. Already the score is 14-3 Panthers in the first quarter. For the eighth time this fall, I sigh heavily.

Back to Liz and Dick. Christ on a cracker, is this script awful. Did all this stuff actually happen? They have Burton and Taylor sitting around and in walks Eddie Fisher. Burton tells Fisher he is sleeping with La Taylor and makes her choose between the two men. I mean, did that happen? Was the reality as clunkily written as that scene?

Back at the Linc, there are a lot of empty seats. I’m assuming they didn’t black out the game because the tickets had already been sold and people just didn’t feel like showing up to the game. It’s depressing to see all those unoccupied seats and makes me despair that it might take awhile for the team to get back to the playoffs. I also realize that I just don’t care for ESPN’s Monday Night Football coverage. Something about it is very quiet and deflating, even during a more interesting game. I wonder who got fired for scheduling this crapathon on prime time.

Oh, look, Theresa Russell, who played a very different Liz in Whore, is playing Liz Taylor’s mother. She isn’t bad, actually. She doesn’t call attention to herself and doesn’t overplay it. And the guy who plays Creed on The Office is some agent. It’s nice to see familiar faces to lighten this disaster.

Touchdown! The Eagles are on the board! I don’t know who this guy Bryce Brown is but he’s been running a lot so maybe that’s a ray of hope for the team. They miss the two-point conversion, which would have tied the game. Oh, well.

Meanwhile, Elizabeth is hung over on her yacht. Lying down to sunbathe, she asks the waiter for two bloody Marys. “I ordered breakfast,” she tells Richard as he joins her. I thought that line was actually a little funny. Later, Burton’s brother falls down the steps and hurts himself. “I’m sorry,” the doctor tells Mr. and Mrs. Burton in the hospital. “It’s his spine. He’ll never walk again.” And walks away. Would a doctor actually say that? Wouldn’t you soft-pedal it so it’s honest but slightly less brutal?

Isn’t that Allen Iverson at the game?

Liz and Dick seems to suffer from one of the most unfortunate tendencies of biopics: Stating a thesis about a character instead of showing it. A bored Taylor states outright that she has been so busy all her life that she never learned to just do nothing. Hey, why show when you can tell?

Hey, at least Alex Henery seems to be doing well. So there’s that.

Then on Lifetime, it’s the ultimate insult: Lohan’s impression of Taylor’s ferocious performance in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? “That better not have been a full bottle, George,” she chides Burton after he breaks a bottle. “You can’t afford to waste good liquor — not on your salary.” This is one of the most amateurish line readings I’ve ever heard. Lohan has none of the venom or fire that made this dialogue classic. It’s like second graders trying to perform Edward Albee. It’s like the worst Saturday Night Live parody you’ve ever seen. To be fair, Lohan is punching above her weight class here, trying to pull off a challenging part in Virginia Woolf. But Taylor nailed it and Lohan didn’t even come close. They say Lindsay Lohan wasted her acting talent on booze and drugs and running around and even though I’ve never seen her in much, what I’ve seen does not give me a good impression of talent. Judging by Liz and Dick, she just didn’t have a lot of talent to waste in the first place.

Halftime and the score is 15-14 Eagles. Maybe they’ll stop the losing streak at six games but I’m not staying up to watch it. I hate to say it but the outcome barely matters this late in the season. Rather than being in a bad mood and tired on a Tuesday, I’d rather just be in a bad mood.

So that was that, switching between one train wreck and another. Both Lifetime movies and Eagles games used to be a lot more fun than this. It was a night to forget.

JR's Last Cliffhanger

So the second season of the reboot of Dallas will probably be … awkward … following Larry Hagman’s death. They had already started shooting some episodes. I imagine they will do at least part of this season since there is a lot they can milk from JR Ewing’s death. Hagman, Linda Gray and Patrick Duffy has been good friends for 35 years so there will probably be some real pathos as they mourn on screen. I wonder if they will write it as a death from natural causes or do like with Jock Ewing, where he was “in South America on business” for months before dying in an off-screen plane crash.

JR’s death, though, is the one that hits the show by far the hardest. I think he’s one of the greatest TV characters of all time. There’s a website called TV Tropes that has a category of Magnificent Bastard and JR was the originator. He was so despicable and you wanted to see him get his comeuppance but also wanted to see him win. The best episodes of Dallas were the ones that ended with him reveling in some scheme and flashing his million-dollar shit-eating grin. Without characters like JR Ewing, we wouldn’t have anti-heroes like Walter White.

As much as I did enjoy the reboot of Dallas, this should be the last season because the heart of the show is dead. The whole thing didn’t really get going until Hagman came out of his depression in the first episode and flashed the aforementioned smile. The episodes were lacking somewhat in energy without the interaction between him and Sue Ellen.

The smartest thing the Dallas producers did was just continue the show’s plot 21 years after the original ended. There had been rumors for years that they would remake it entirely with a new cast and that would have been horrifying, especially since Jennifer Lopez was rumored to be the new Sue Ellen. What fans really want to see is the original cast reunited. The intrigue with John Ross and Christopher and the next generation was fun but I kind of spent their scenes waiting for the patriarchs and matriarchs to reappear. There are plenty of people like my brother and I who can quote chapter and verse from the first 14 seasons and it was a treat for us to revisit some old plot lines and nuances. One thing they should have followed up on is that Christopher’s birth parents are JR and Kristin, who was Sue Ellen’s sister and the woman who infamously shot JR. I don’t think the series ever mentioned that salacious bit of gossip again and only Bobby ever knew it. Now I don’t know if they’ll revisit that plot point.

It’s a shame because the last season of the show really hit its stride in the last few minutes of the last episode. They had a good fake-out going with John Ross and Christopher supposedly working together, and it looked like the show would take a turn for the bland until their rivalry reignited after – what else? – some devious advice from JR. Then there was the big reveal that Christopher’s estranged wife was the daughter of Cliff Barnes, which I thought they pulled off fantastically well. This also makes Christopher’s wife his adoptive half-cousin, which would have made for some delicious twists and angst, and now who knows what will happen.

At least I have 14 years of DVDs to console me.

Consume

By Brian McCurdy


Jane finished her piece of apple pie and slid the plate aside. She pulled over her circulars and started digging into them in earnest.

Let’s see … Wal-Mart stays open all night but the Black Friday deals really start at midnight. Target’s doors open at midnight. Best Buy opens at 3 a.m. Kohl’s is the straggler, opening at 4. She started a list on her legal pad.

“Aunt Jane, what are you writing?” her nephew Bobby asked, chocolate cookie in hand.

“Oh, just my list of shopping strategy. I have a lot to cover in the next few hours so I need to get organized.”

“Look at you, so methodical,” said her sister Charlene. “Much more organized than me. I’ll be lucky if I start in mid-December.”

“I enjoy it. It’s a lot of work but I do like to give.”

Charlene cut herself a piece of pumpkin pie and offered Jane a cup of coffee, which she eagerly accepted. Their father switched on the Bears-Cowboys game and Charlene’s husband watched it with him. Their brother went outside for a cigarette. A few of the kids swarmed around the table for brownies and cookies.

“So what’s the game plan?” asked Charlene.

“Well,” Jane said, consulting her checklist, “Wal-Mart is open 24 hours as usual so I can get some DVDs for mom and dad and some CDs for the kids. I figure they have a good price on that stuff year round, so I can get those there first.”

“Right.”

“Then the big Black Friday sale starts at midnight so I can kill time til then. Hopefully, I’ll be first in line for a new 51-inch TV. I’ve been in the market for one for awhile.”

“Good for you. You do need to get rid of that old CRT. I can’t believe you still watch it.”

“I know. I’ve just been waiting for a good sale. Anyway, after that, I can head to Target to pick up some clothes and maybe a coat for Rob. He could use one. At 3, I’ll go to Best Buy. I would love one of those iPads.”

“Well, good luck. They may very well be sold out unless you’re in line early.”

“I figure I can get in line by 1 or 1:30 so I might be OK,” says Jane. “Anyway, if I don’t get an iPad, no big deal. But I thought I’d give it a shot. I can also pick up any CDs or DVDs I didn’t get at Wal-Mart. After that, I’ll check out house wares at Kohl’s when they open at 4.”

Brother Rob, catching wind of the conversation during halftime, walked over. “What a day. I guess you’ll be ready for a nap by then.”

“Yeah, I usually sleep for a bit when I get home,” Jane said. “Which makes it all the more important to stay awake tonight.”

Jane walked into the kitchen to top off her half-empty cup of coffee. Her family always ate Thanksgiving at a normal dinner hour, rather than early afternoon, so after dinner, clean-up and a leisurely dessert, it was almost 9.

She looked around the dining room and tried to match the present with the person.

Mom: How I Met Your Mother season 6.

Dad: Apocalypse Now special edition.

Tracy: Rihanna CD

Bobby: Drake CD

Rob: Missoni overcoat

Charlene: Pfaltzgraf flatware

In her mind’s eye, Jane started planning her routes through the stores. Wal-Mart, Target, Best Buy, Kohl’s. She could almost see the aisles and see herself moving down them, nimble fingers picking through the merchandise.

A little while later, she went to the bedroom to find her coat. “Well, I’d best be off, everyone. It’s getting late and I’d like to get there before the real crowds gather.”

“OK, then,” said her mom. “Thanks for coming. Good to see you. And good luck out there. Happy hunting.”

“Yeah, don’t get trampled on or anything,” her dad laughed.

“You know me. I’m more likely to be the one doing the trampling,” said Jane.

They all laughed. “We’ll talk to you soon about Christmas,” dad told her.

She left amid kisses and hugs. Jane pulled into the Wal-Mart parking lot at 10:02. She waited through three cycles to make the left turn. It was already packed and she had to drive up and down several aisles to find a spot.

She groaned. She left too late. Maybe she should have skipped dessert. All that time wasted drinking coffee.

Finally, she found a spot far away from the main entrance. List in hand, she half ran into the store.

She climbed through aisles of women’s clothes and produce and office supplies, moving deftly around the crowds. Wal-Mart was ablaze in red and green and fluorescent lights and roll-back smiley faces. Johnny Mathis sang “The Most Wonderful Time of the Year.”

The other shoppers pushed their blue carts deliberately down the aisles, half full with all manner of CDs and T-shirts and books. Some wore sweats or pajama pants, while some wore dresses or sweaters, coming directly from turkey and green bean casserole and apple pie. All had alert looks on their faces, their eyes focused on everything and nothing particular with the brightness of a laser.

At the back of the store, there was already a line for the electronics. Jane counted seven people. “Damn,” she muttered. The competition was starting earlier than she anticipated.

The CDs and DVDs would have to wait, then. She could get them later at Target or Best Buy, so it really wasn’t a big deal. She got in line. 

Her laser-like eyes swept the electronics section. There was a 46-inch Samsung that was probably plasma, which she didn’t care for. Another was a 60-inch, which was just too big. Finally, her eyes alighted on the prize: A 51-inch LG, an LED model. Perfect.

She tried to hear what the people in front of her were saying. They seemed to be interested in the 60-inch model, so they wouldn’t be in competition with her. That left five people and two appeared to be a couple so it was really four people potentially in competition for the LG. There were plenty of models, though, so she might not have to worry about anyone else.

She plotted her route directly to the TV, where she would stand and wave down an employee to help her move it. If somebody else got there first, she would just have to settle for her second choice, a 46-inch LED Sony. It was a little smaller but it would have to do.

Jane checked her watch. Just 10:12. Over an hour and 45 minutes to go. Thoughts of presents and credit cards rolled over in her head like tumbling waves, consuming her.

I had the most murderous dream

I dreamed one of my friends murdered another friend. In the haze of sleep, it wasn’t clear who the friends were. They were most likely composites of people I know; like how you know who people are in the dream but when you wake up, you realize the people weren’t as you know them in the waking world.

I had gone over to this friend’s apartment and he told me how he killed the other person. The victim went to the apartment and the murderer asked him to check his TV’s connections because the TV wasn’t working. The murderer had spilled some water behind the TV and left a live electrical connection in the puddle. When the victim went behind the TV to check on the wiring, he got electrocuted.

So that was more a nightmare than a dream. I’ve been having these horrible sporadic nightmares lately. Sometimes they’ve been genuinely unpleasant subjects, like when I dreamed someone was lying on top of me and choking me. Sometimes the nightmares have been those types that upset you in the moment but when you clear your head and reflect back, they don’t seem so bad and you feel stupid for being so upset.

Now for something lighter. I later dreamed that I had moved into a house that I always coveted, which my childhood friend lived in. You know how large buildings sway a little? This house also swayed — a lot. I was sitting in the bedroom and it swayed all the way across the street to the point where it would have been sitting in the middle of traffic. It just kept moving and never snapped back.

I looked out the window and noted how close my bedroom was to the Delaware River. It was flowing so close to my window that any flooding would have killed me in my sleep. Then the whole house went on a magic journey beneath the river. The river turned into a pool and we (whoever else was in the dream) ended up staring at the people looking into the pool. I thought that was whimsical.

America is a lock-in

Once your territory agrees to become part of the United States, it hands over its figurative car keys to the host. Then this party becomes a lock-in, a New Year’s Eve party in which everyone must stay over and guests are not allowed to leave early for fear that they might drive drunk. Alright?

People from 50 states have started petitions for secession and I’m guessing they’re unhappy with Obama’s election. There are a number of obvious reasons why wanting your state to become a sovereign nation due to an election result is profoundly stupid. Shall we count the ways?

Say you’re a Republican in California and you’re upset about the Democratic victory and have filed a petition for your state to secede. You really think it’s fair that the millions of people in your state who voted for Obama should bend to your tantrum as your state declares independence from the union? What are Californians who oppose secession supposed to do, roll over because you’re unhappy? This election was close enough that’s it’s not like one state had 99 percent of the voters go for Romney. There are pockets of support for both candidates in every state, making the argument that any of these states should leave the country grossly selfish. Shall we disband as a nation and become 50 separate sovereign territories? Does any thinking person think this is a viable argument?

You can’t seriously support the concept of democracy and simultaneously declare that because your guy lost, your whole state should leave America.

I’m sure this is just crackpots being crackpots and there are bound to be a few of those in a nation with 300 million people. But the idea of secession, even if it’s unconstitutional, just pushes buttons with me. It’s almost heresy. By all means, let’s all form our own countries and fight one another. It worked out so well the first time we tried this in the 1860s, there’s no reason it can’t be a similarly smashing success in 2012.

This seems like drama for the sake of drama and if Romney had won, I’m sure some Obama crackpots would be starting secession petitions. I know that no matter what the outcome of any election, I would never leave this country. I would stay and try to find a workable solution.

And no, I don’t say “go ahead” to all the red states that want to secede. Those are our own people in those states, part of the same America. We need these states and we need their citizens.

If you have a problem with the election or anything else going on in this country, the solution isn’t to storm off in a huff and threaten to take your toys and leave. We would be a better nation if we all worked together to find acceptable solutions to our common problems. America is as great as it is because by and large our people, as diverse as they are, manage to come together most of the time. No president can unite this country. We must do that ourselves.  

The election is over. It ended. It’s done. (And thank Christ Almighty for that.) Let’s quit being drama queens, quit being bitter, quit gloating and actually accomplish something.

Will Starve for Oscar

I’m seeing photos of Matthew McConaughey looking like a gaunt pencil for whatever movie he’s doing next. I’m hearing about how Anne Hathaway lost a bunch of weight for Les Miserables, eating something like a square of oatmeal paste or something nasty like that per day.

Eww. If I were an actor and someone approached me with a great part but told me I’d have to emaciate myself to do it, I’d have three words for them. And those three words would be C, G and I. They would just have to reduce the size of my fat ass with technology.

I would have zero desire to eat nothing but air and Saltines for two months to play someone in a North Korean work camp with cholera. It can’t be healthy to lose so much weight in a short period of time. These celebrities usually say they were under doctor’s supervision when they crash diet but I’m skeptical. I’m sure they could find a Dr. Nick Riviera (valedictorian of Hollywood Upstairs Medical College) to referee their starvation. Doctors also supervise brides who lose weight on all-liquid diets, walking around with an IV up their noses, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea.

Actors do this sort of thing, altering their bodies like silly putty, for Oscars. Sometimes it works and the last decade or so is littered with Oscar clips of actors and actresses who are unrecognizable. It’s admirable to put oneself through all sorts of training and physical regimens but their must be an easier way, what with 100 years of Hollywood sleight of hand, to get the same effect.

What I would jump at, however, is gaining some weight to make a movie. If I were to alter my body to get some work, I’d rather have some fun doing it. I’d much rather spend six months eating cheese omelets and chocolate-peanut butter ice cream than running 10 miles a day and rewarding myself with a luxurious dinner of kale on rice cakes.

Of course, you can endanger your health by gaining weight quickly just as easily as losing it fast. I wouldn’t go too extreme. I’d take a part with just a little weight gain so I could be a slothful fatass for a few months and then easily get back to normal. Maybe I could land the part of a chubby editor in a searing prestige drama. If I had the proper Method training, I could really commit to something like that.

I had the most suckered dream

I dreamed I was on a bus going through the city. We passed by my aunts and uncles eating at some sort of outdoor restaurant at 14^th Street and some other intersection.

I had lost some sort of bag with something important in it and was upset about this. One of the passengers says he’ll give me $5 to tell me where it is. The guy tells me I have to take the bus to 16^th Street and I can get the bag there.

The guy thinks this is funny because he thought I assumed I’d be getting the bag back immediately. However, I thought it was funny because not only did the guy tell me where to get my bag but he gave me $5 for my trouble. That would more than cover any bus fare or whatever for my inconvenience. Sucker!

Later I dreamed of Mount Rushmore but some of the faces were different. Charles Darwin was on it. He was wearing a monocle and sticking his tongue out at a president wearing a monocle (I’m assuming Franklin Roosevelt).

That seems random but it must have seeped into my unconscious when I heard people had been writing in Charles Darwin for president. You know, Darwin is one of those names you don’t really hear about. Not too many people today seem to be named Darwin. It’s the same with names like Churchill or Tesla. Where are these people? Did the gene pool die off?

Really makes you think.

Apropos of Nothing

I hate when the bar of soap gets down to the nub. It’s hard to use but I almost feel wasteful about throwing it away. Is this normal?

I’m disgusted that the NHL canceled the Winter Classic and so much of the hockey season. With no Flyers, and the Eagles players and management revealing themselves as incompetent, I have no local teams to tide me over until pitchers and catchers report. Don’t make me have to care about the NBA.

Why do we have the euphemism “bath tissue”? Are there really people whose faces would go beet red if they had to call it “toilet paper”?

There is nothing more offensive to the eye than campaign signs the day after the election. It’s bad enough during the campaigns but even worse on the morning after. All of us, regardless of political persuasion, should unite in our disdain for this. Get out the bulldozers and clean up America.

Since it didn’t snow last winter, I have a feeling that drivers are going to freak out even worse than normal this winter because “we’re not used to this.” Yes, it is difficult to summon memories of the snow that fell two whole years ago and remember how to drive in it.

American Horror Story: Asylum is just batshit insane. They are throwing every horror trope at the wall and seeing what sticks. We’ve had Nazis, insane people, aliens, demonic possession, werewolf-like creatures and God knows what else in just the first four episodes. It’s not a show that’s actually good but it is a guilty pleasure. Plus, I love Jessica Lange.

Commercials for tampons and toilet paper sometimes claim to “get real” by not using euphemisms or being delicate but they don’t nearly go far enough. Instead of blue liquid, use yellow or red on the pads and paper. Talk about “twat” and “piss.” That’s when shit will start to get real.

I was surprised when we ran out of candy on Halloween, and we had a lot to give out. We’re not usually home on that night so I wasn’t sure what to expect.

Grampa, tell us about Nor'easter Athena

Nor’easter Athena? Sure, I remember that one well. It was way back in the autumn of ’12. If you ask more old timers like me, I’m sure they’d vividly remember that storm.

It was a cold and blustery day, as I recall. Oh, I can remember leaving work one afternoon and seeing the rain turn to freezing rain and then to sleet. The air temperature was dancing on the fine line between wet and frozen. Later that night, the sleet was hitting the bathroom skylight and you could just hear the sound ringing all through the house. The sound of winter coming early, it was. Then the next morning, as I drove to work and saw the sporadic patches of wet snow on the ground …

… Well, a person doesn’t soon forget a sight like that.

So that was Athena, gone down in the annals of weather history. Remind me some other time to tell you about the other named weather phenomena of that bygone age.

Like Thunderstorm Clarissa. This was in July of ’13, in the middle of a Monday afternoon. Oh, there were great peals of thunder and strikes of lightning so bright it was like a fire come down from Heaven. Must have been a quarter inch of rain that day. Windy, too. Turned my umbrella inside out, the wind did.

And I can’t forget Fog Mitchell. As I recall, it was a humid morning one September in the Teens. The fog was thicker than any pea soup you could get in a restaurant back then. The middle of the morning and you had to keep your headlights on, you did. And it still barely helped.

Well, my memory isn’t what it used to be when I was a young man. Thank God they thought to name all those storms. It really helps us keep them straight for posterity.  

A Vote for Disillusionment

No matter who wins the presidential election today, I’ll still be disillusioned. More accurately, I was never really illusioned in the first place because I’ve been trying to be realistic. It kills me to see the Romney ad with the woman jogging and thinking, “Hope and change were just campaign slogans.” Gasp! Next you’ll tell me “I like Ike” was just a slogan.

Yeah, no shit “hope and change” were campaign slogans. I was optimistic in 2008 about Obama but I never thought he would wave some kind of magic wand and solve all the country’s problems. I voted for Obama then and I’m voting for him tomorrow but even in the giddiness of 2008, I knew he would run into the same problems every president does when the party ends and the hangover starts. No president can live up to his billing during the campaign and that’s not necessarily a failure.

So in the past few years, when I would see the snarky bumper stickers and hear the snarky comments saying, “Where’s your hope and change now?” I would just think, “Yes, those were slogans and the reality is more complicated and cannot fit into a sound bite.”

I’m not a total cynic because I do see some evidence of hope and change: Bin Laden is dead, there is healthcare reform, we are taking slow steps to economic recovery and gay marriage is more plausible than it was at the start of the decade. But I never believed any presidential candidate when they promised us all ponies. I do believe this country will march toward progress but it will be a clusterfuck at times watching it happen. Washington runs like a cliquey, back-stabbing, petty high school — the way it always has — and there’s no reason to think it’s going to stop anytime soon. I believe that this country is wonderful overall but in individual snapshots, it can sometimes be deflating to look at.

I’m not all that wise in this area but I do try to take a look at the long sweep of history rather than the momentary horse race of polls and pundits. I try to look at the big picture when people say things like, “This country is the most divided it’s ever been” (Really? Even more than during the Civil War?) or “This is the most important presidential election ever” (we’ve been having the most important election ever every four years since 2000).

No matter who wins today, the Union will survive because it’s built to do so. For Americans who didn’t like the Bush administration, we still made it through. For Americans who didn’t like the Obama administration, we all made it through the first term. Even in disillusionment, there can be a kind of wary hope. The key for me is not getting too high or too low.

What's wrong with these people?

I saw a picture of a Giants fan using what looked like a road construction sign to break the windows of a bus in San Francisco after his team’s World Series victory. It would never occur to me to do that after a championship win. Granted, I don’t have much experience with winning Philadelphia teams but during the one win of my adult life, I just screamed and jumped around. There was no vandalism. I was home and sober so I can’t say I had any drunken mob mentality influencing me, but still.

So I wonder what’s wrong with these people. Why does something wonderful = destruction of property? Why act like an ass? Why not just savor the victory and if you go a little crazy, do something harmless like taking your shirt off and running around in the street?

It’s not like something horrific happened and people are rioting to vent their frustration. Their team won the World Series. They did not lose. Hell, even through the approximately 3,500 losing championship games I’ve sat through, I’ve never had any inclination to carry on like an asshole and destroy something. I just kind of sighed and went to bed after it was over.

And what is wrong with the dimwitted, knuckle-dragging mouth-breathers who comment on so many online articles and videos? I read about a woman who posted a video about her experience with sexual harassment with the skeptics group to which she belonged. People ended up calling her a slut and hoping she got raped. What is the problem with these horrible people? Where does it come from when you hope for someone else’s sexual assault? Who are these trolls?

Mary Elizabeth Williams of Salon was also talking about how she never reads the comments on her columns because they are so nasty and I can't blame her.I can't stand Williams' writing most of the time since she takes an obvious stance toward a common tragedy and then makes a hacky, melodramatic point about it. (After the Dark Knight Rises shooting, she wrote "We long for togetherness at the movies. After the Aurora shooting, the theater experience will never be the same," which I thought was over-reactive bullshit even during the initial shock of the shooting.) Still, I don't agree with her but I have never thought of posting some horrifying comment on her articles.

I never post nasty comments online. There were only two times I posted something disagreeable: When Garrison Keillor write something condescending about the gays and when an advice columnist advised someone that she had no obligation to visit her friend in the hospital after the friend got drunk and assaulted. In both cases, they just wrote something that got under my skin. I don't remember what I told these people in my comments but I'm pretty sure I didn't wish disease or rape on them.

What on earth is wrong with the people who are tweeting things like, "I'm not a racist but let's put the white back in White House"? There's no other way to interpret that statement than as racist. You're not saying you support a candidate, party or ideology. You're saying you support a skin color; that the skin color is your primary qualification for president. 

Wait ... you say you're not racist. I stand corrected. 

You can't preface a statement by saying "I'm not racist but" because that "but" usually undermines the first part of your sentence. People can't declare themselves to be with or without prejudice. That's something outsiders have to determine by looking at these people's behavior. Nobody is going to admit being racist. By the way, I'm not a misogynist but let's put all women back in the kitchen.