The minutes ago I looked out the window and it was dry out there. Five minutes ago, I looked out the window and it was raining like a cow pissing on a flat rock. Now it's just kind of dribbling out there.

Just thought I'd lend that visual to anyone unlucky enough to stumble across this blog. I had a couple of free moments and realized it had been seven months since I put a few words on here. Who has time for these things? Who has time for Facebook? Like many I am under a continual barrage of people requesting me to become their friend. It's the weirdest damned thing and coming from a generation that got no more virtual than a note on paper sent by US Mail, I find it impossible to become fully a part of it. It's the next step after all the hopeless swine who wander the malls of Merka with cellphones glued to their ears, yet they never talk.

Horrible. Horrible.

Lá Fhéile Pádraig Sona Daoibh

Or Happy Saint Patrick's Day to all you non-Gaelic speakers. It's a beautiful day around the Bay.

It's Springheel Jack's birthday. The old hound is 12 today. He's a great dog and lets Mariko and Dayton pull his tail. He don't hear too well and he has trouble getting up in the morning, but he's earned his dotage.

I am sitting in my bureaucrat's chair, chatting about Zoroastrian equinox festivals (beginning of the Persian New Year). listening to Leo Rowsome, the greatest of Uillean pipers, and dreaming about the silken caress of Jameson's as it slides down my Irish gizzard.


Sláinte!!

Cherry Blossoms. . .tortillas?

Daring Dayton has discovered that cherry blossoms smell like corn tortillas.

How 'bout that!

Wilkins goes to the Great Beyond

Another of my boyhood heroes passes over the threshold.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/01/09/DDQS15665F.DTL&type=entertainment

I knew that if Hefti had died, Wilkins had to follow soon. Creature Features was the greatest, and now we are bereft of anything as entertaining, though Mystery Science Theater 3000 came close. Sigh.

I once asked him, at the Federation Trading Post during an appearance by James Doohan, attended by Don and myself, why he didn't show "Nosferatu." He peered up at me through his glasses and replied that if he showed a silent movie people would turn up the volume on their TVs and when a commercial came on, their TVs would explode. HE couldn't be responsible for such a thing.

I wonder if I will ever again be able to watch "The Horror at Party Beach."

The National Anthem

There is nothing like our national anthem sung straight, with dignity, by an Irish Tenor. I commend to those with I-Tunes the perfomance of John McCormack from an album called "Greatest Irish Tenors." It is sung as I would like to hear it every time I go to the ballpark. I used to enjoy the occasional melismatic performance in an R & B vein, but it's gotten to the point where it's barely recognizeable, and despite hopes and dreams, no one is the second coming of Aretha Franklin.

Wesley Clark on McCain

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpsI-RBTvFg

Here is something I alluded to earlier in some other post somewhere. I agree with General Clark on this. Scheiffer is incredulous, but Clark's argument is a good one. There's a lot of other things Clark could say here, but doesn't, I suspect.

Neal Hefti

The composer of my favorite song when I was 8 years old has died. He also composed the tune "Gotham Municipal Swing Band" which was the theme to "Creature Features" when it debutyed on KTVU in January of 1971 showing "The Horror at Party Beach."


Sigh. There's nothing like that on TV anymore, at least not in the SF Bay Area. There's no local fun anymore.
There's nothing tongue in cheek like "Batman."


Balls.


http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2008/10/14/entertainment/e204936D54.DTL&tsp=1

Yet Another Political Rant

Why is it that Obama doesn't seem substantive? Is it because people who don't really want him to be president have said so?

I can understand someone not being sure if they are positive about him, but if you actually look at what he's done in his professional life, it is quite substantial. He has an enormous amount to offer. He is clearly a thinking individual who knows what he's about, works at undestanding a problem, and has great analytical powers to apply to a solution. What the hell do people want? I keep hearing the comment that he hasn't really made clear what he would do. That's nonsense. He's made it abundantly clear, both in debates and speeches and on his website.

He also has the obvious capacity to lead, to inspire and to manage large group efforts. Someone on the radio this morning said that he has less experience than only 20 other presidents in our history.

As for McCain, I recall Wesley Clark questioning the idea that McCain's Vietnam experience qualifies him to be Commander in Chief, and Bob Scheiffer being incredulous at the thought. However, Clark was right, and if you look at it why would being a POW qualify you except on the basis of knowing what it is to suffer on that level? That's certainly part of it, but nowhere near all of leading a nation's forces at war.

On the economy, McCain makes me think he has no real idea what's happening in a global sense. I don't want another goombah in there who only understands enough to make himself and his pals a profit. His outlook, and his reliance on boilerplate expressions and hoped for zingers to make an impact leave me with my jaw hanging open wondering if we will ever do better than that. Obama brings me back to thinking about things. He has an intellect that he's not worried about displaying. McCain isn't as far down the slope as Bush, but he's also not inspiring at all.

What has come through loud and clear to me in these debates is that McCain is fundamentally a man of the past, the Cold War. His day is come and gone. It's partly his age coming through, but it's also his outlook that leads me to that. There are those who age and grow wiser, and make you believe that the times they live in are of no real consquence to their abilities and vision. McCain ain't one of those for me.

There is something forward looking about Obama, and static or backward looking about McCain. If I were a more deft commentator, I might be able to articulate this. In my late afternoon torpor, that's the best I can come up with. I do not feel safe at the thought of McCain managing foreign relations in a crisis that potentially will turn military. I do not feel safe with McCain having the final say in economic decisions. Social issues under McCain will go backwards or nowhere.

This post was inspired as a comment to a post on What is Hip, but I thought I should just post it here 'cause I rarely do these days,and things have slowed down a bit here in the calabozo known as my office.