The world is facing many crises theses days, from the economic recession to the trouble in Gaza to oh my god did you hear that Lindsey Lohan broke up with her girlfriend?
But none of those crises – at least as far as our local TV channels are concerned – is quite as monumental as the switch to digital TV, which, unless you’ve spent the past year in a coma or are currently dead, you already know happens on February 17.
The reason you know that is because, approximately every 30 seconds, a very loud person comes on the TV to tell you in a very loud voice that you need to purchase and install a digital converter box right now before the entire world collapses into a deep, dark void of penetrating nothingness for all time. Other consequences of failing to install a converter box prior to the 17th include, but aren’t limited to, oral herpes, certain death and, worst of all, not having TV. I also read somewhere that they’re going to start killing a baby bunny every hour, on the hour, until every last household in America has digital TV, although I haven’t been able to double-source it. Then again, I did read it on Wikipedia, so it’s probably not true anyway. Then again, I’m the one who posted it on Wikipedia, so it’s definitely not true (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_television).
It’s become increasingly clear to me that history will show the switch to digital TV to be the great challenge of our time. Sure, the war on terror is “important.” And global warming might “kill all life on planet Earth,” blah, blah, blah. Ooh, we’re so scared, global warming! Frankly, here in the age of digital TV, those issues have become peripheral at best.
AIDS and poverty already had their day in the sun. World peace is so 2008. We as a society are not going to be judged by how we handle some trivial issue of a bygone era. Our greatness will be determined by how we join together and rise up in 2009 to destroy all obstacles in our path – no matter how many human lives it costs – in order to ensure that every last man, woman and child on Earth has free and easy access to Dr. Phil.
It’s OK to be scared. It’s not every day that the world faces a crisis that makes the bubonic plague look like a case of the sniffles. And no one likes to see baby bunnies die, no matter how necessary it may be. But it’s imperative that we step up to the challenge. Do you think Neil Armstrong wasn’t afraid to take that first step on the moon? Do you think Ghandi wasn’t afraid when he resisted the British Empire? Do you think Aragorn wasn’t afraid to lead his dwindling army on a march against the Black Gate of Mordor in order to distract Sauron and his army of Uruk-hai so that Sam and Frodo could destroy the Ring of Power in the fires of Mount Doom?
Of course they were scared. What matters is that they pushed through the fear, and helped to make Earth, not to mention Middle Earth, a better place.
You might be wondering, “How can you compare the act of buying a converter box to the work of Ghandi, let alone Aragorn?”
Before you get all worked up, just take a moment to imagine a life without TV. I mean, think about it: No Sean Hannity. No NASCAR. No The Hills. No Deal Or No Deal. Yikes, right? A world without the wit and wisdom of Howie Mandel is no world for me.
In conclusion, Ghandi might have helped a nation gain its independence, but we are the ones who will ensure that, for generations to come, everyone still gets to watch every single episode of America’s Got Talent. Did you see the Rappin’ Granny? Oh, priceless!
Granted, there are a few drawbacks to digital TV, including the need to buy the converter box, and possibly a new antenna, plus a new TV. And the signal is all-or-nothing, so if there is any interference at all, all you get is a blue screen – but you can always just pretend that they zoomed in really, really close on a Smurf. That’s called making lemonade.
But clearly the negatives of digital TV are far outweighed by the catastrophic consequences if you don’t get it, which also include asphyxia, soreness and elephantiasis of the testicles. And yet, millions of Americans still haven’t gotten their converter boxes, so many that in early February – right after karma makes the Steelers lose the Super Bowl because their fans are dirty, awful, fat-faced traitors – congress might vote to push back the digital TV deadline to June 14.
America is playing with fire. It’s up to you and me to push this country forward, to fulfill the dreams of our forefathers, to fight and bleed and die under the proud flag of 24-hour Rock of Love marathons. Now, go get that converter box. If you don’t do it for yourself, for the love of God, do it for the bunnies.
Barry Manilow is a lot of things, and “reserved” is not one of them. And the mawkish music legend is every bit as dynamic in conversation as he is on record, whether he’s talking about how he created the power ballad, hamming it up about his age or discussing the fact that he’s become a walking punch line.
In the past four years, Manilow, now 65, has padded his already staggering career numbers with the release of a series of albums covering the “greatest hits” of the ’50s, ’60s, ’70s and ’80s (The Greatest Songs of The Eighties hit shelves in November) and a wildly successful Vegas show.
Team Last Call: Between this series of albums and the Vegas show, you’ve had what could be considered a real career renaissance over the last four years or so. What’s that been like for you?
Barry Manilow: I don’t consider it a renaissance. I never went away! I’ve just been doing my thing for all these years. Artists like myself, it’s like a roller-coaster. It just keeps going, and sometimes it’s very high and sometimes it’s low. But with me, the lows haven’t been too low, thank goodness. And the highs have been thrilling.
TLC: In the ’90s, your focus shifted to cover material, by and large, and I’ve seen you lament that fact in a few interviews. Can you talk about that?
BM: It’s all about Clive Davis and his wisdom about what records will sell. As a creator myself, I always want to create an original. But like he does with every artist on his label, he says, “It’s not always about being creative. It’s about what the public will like.” Since I’m an arranger and I’m a musician and producer, I can figure out how to make [cover material] work without feeling like I’m giving everything away. I see the fun in it. There does come a point every so often where I say, “Stop! I have to release an original thing. Stop! I have to do one for myself.”
TLC: I imagine it’s an interesting tug of war, with these albums debuting at number one, number two …
BM: If they all were released and they all just died on the vine, it would have been easy to just say, “Well, I gave it a try, and now I’ll go back to doing my original stuff and join the rest of the out-of-work composers and struggle along.” But [Clive’s] got this incredible talent of being able to zero in on what the public would like, so I am the grateful recipient of this man’s gift. Plus, my original stuff will never sell as well as what Clive gives me. But it will give me so much encouragement and so much inspiration that I can ride on that for the next couple of years, if he’s interested in coming up with some other cockamamie idea for a cover record.
TLC: You’re nominated for a Grammy for In the Swing of Christmas. What does that kind of thing mean to you at this point in your career?
BM: It’s a wonderful thing. They find me now and again and they give me a nod. It’s great. I didn’t expect that at all. What was interesting is that this Christmas album had nothing to do with Clive, had nothing to do with popularity, had nothing to do with charts. Isn’t that interesting? It had nothing to do with commercial success or having a committee listen to it and say, “Hey, we like this!”
TLC: People have this idea of Barry Manilow as a balladeer, like Johnny Mathis, but you’ve protested that in the past.
BM: Maybe some of the real big hits were ballads. But even my beautiful old ballads had a lot of passion, where Johnny, who I’m a great big fan of, sings much more gently. Keep in mind, I’ve always been on the border of rock and roll. As a matter of fact, people credit me for inventing the power ballad, which I think I might have done. “Mandy” was the first power ballad. They keep copying that style, with the piano and [how] the song builds and the key changes and the ending. They still do it. So therefore, I don’t know why people think all I do is sit at a piano and sing love songs. Boy, that’s about the last thing I do.
TLC: It’s been about 35 years since “Mandy” …
BM: Boy, am I an old fart! Holy mackerel! Thanks for reminding me.
TLC: Sorry about that. So, when you were that kid, being transformed into a pop superstar, are you thinking at that point, “I might have a career in 2009”?
BM: Oh, never. Never. But I’ll tell you what I did think: I knew I would land on my feet. I never thought I’d have this kind of career. But even when it began, it didn’t matter to me, and hey, it still doesn’t. I know that it sounds ungrateful, and I don’t mean it to sound ungrateful, but this career, the money, the huge success, doesn’t really matter. What matters is that I get the opportunity to still do it, and for that I am grateful, so grateful to the public and to the record companies and to Clive. But I don’t do it for anything but [the fact that] I can’t not do it. If I hadn’t been successful, I probably would have been really unhappy – but I wouldn’t have stopped.
TLC: You’re bringing the Ultimate Manilow show to Reading. Do you ever sort of impress yourself with the amount of hits you pack into the set?
BM: Impress myself? [laughs] Yeah, sometimes it’s overwhelming. It is. That I can fill up 90 minutes with music that everybody knows – that’s pretty amazing.
TLC: So, you’re this hugely successful and beloved artist, and on the other hand, one of the most mocked. What do you make of that polarity?
BM: You know, the bigger you get, the more you get [ridiculed]. A lot of people like what I do, and a lot of people have trouble with it or they make fun of it. If that’s what happens when you become really, really popular, I’ll take it. They can make fun and I’ll laugh along. People making fun of me? Everybody gets it, but usually everybody gets it for about two years. I’ve [been talked about] for about 30 years, so I’m a very happy guy. People can say whatever they want.
TLC: What else is there for Barry Manilow to achieve?
BM: There’s always something in the pipeline for me. I’ve got five more ideas that I’m developing right now. There’s always five more. And I don’t even care whether they’re successful. I just love that I come up with great ideas that thrill me. That thrill me! And I don’t care whether they stick to the wall. If some of them don’t, it doesn’t matter. I’ve just got millions of ideas. I’ll be on my deathbed, and I’ll be yelling, “Wait a minute! I’ve got one more!”
On record, Murder By Death singer Adam Turla sounds downright menacing, his deep baritone resonating with a Mark Lanegan-meets-Glenn Danzig growl of apocalyptic foreboding. Over swinging, shuffling, post-punk Americana, he flings phrases about infidelity, plunder, whoring, destruction, murder, gods, demons and utter desolation with a detached snarl, mercilessly scraping the bottom of the barrel for the starkest stories and bloodiest plot twists imagination allows.
But on the phone, he sounds really menacing. On a mid-January morning, he fumbles with the receiver and, after some under-the-breath grumbling, growls a curt “hello.” Irritation. Frustration. Were I a character in one of his dark, sprawling concept albums, he’d probably have one of my legs gnawed off by some foamy-mouthed hound of hell.
Fortunately, a few minutes and one funny story about a drinking game called Wizard Staff later, Turla is in a decidedly better mood.
“I’m generally a pretty happy person,” he insists. “I’m doing our band’s taxes right now, though, so when you called me I was wallowing in a sea of misery. I’ve been doing it for 30 hours. It’s killing me.”
Turla’s doing some last-minute office work before he and the rest of Murder By Death hit the road for a February tour that will feature, for the first time, the band playing the entirety of its newest album, Red of Tooth and Claw, and its 2003 storyline sequel, Who Will Survive, And What Will Be Left Of Them?, in sequence, stringing together an epic adventure that involves burning towns, stabbings, adultery, divine interventions, lots of vomit, lots of piss, lots of whiskey and the shooting of the devil in a Mexican town. If Cormac McCarthy ever decided to write a Broadway musical, this might be the score.
Red of Tooth and Claw is far from an obvious prequel. In fact, many of the band’s (sometimes overzealous) fans are still not aware of it, which is something Turla intended.
“Who Will Survive … had a real cult thing going on – there were all sorts of stage productions and ballets, there’s a doctoral thesis written about it that someone sent me, just all sorts of weird, obsessive versions of it,” Turla laughs. “So when this album came out, I didn’t want to just pander by saying it was [a prequel] to get people to go out and buy it.”
Musically, Red of Tooth is a dark and sinister splattering of Americana ornamented with Sarah Balliet’s ominous, droning cello and careening rockabilly beats that throw the songs up on two wheels. With the exception of the borderline-optimistic closing track, “Spring Break 1899,” which Turla claims actually comes closest to his personal worldview, it’s a bleak and heavy listen. And even the last track isn’t exactly what you’d call happy.
“’Spring Break 1899’ is a really happy, ’50s-sounding, dreamy ballad, but the lyrics are about pissing and shitting yourself because you’re drunk and worthless,” Turla chuckles. “Happiness is not interesting.”
Turla may not use it as song fodder, but Murder By Death does have plenty to be cheery about, from its mountain of critical acclaim to the tours it’s landed alongside likeminded bands such as Against Me! and Lucero, as well as Turla’s longtime idols, The Pogues. But why dwell on the bright spots when there’s misery to be had?
“There have been years when we have zero money and eat beans for a month,” Turla laments. “Then again, … I think that making good material comes out of desperation, of necessity. So in that way, I appreciate being in this line of career and not ever having it be peaches and cream.”
*Reprinted from Fly Magazine
This is an ode to Mr. Puddy, the world’s most constipated cat.
Mr. Puddy passed away on July 31 at the age of 17. He was a beloved pet, a good mouse-catcher and a role model for elderly, incontinent cats everywhere.
Puddy is survived by his parents, a Jack Russell, a cocker spaniel, a girl cat and a boy cat. His absence has lowered the pet-to-room ratio from an admirable 5:6 to a dismal 2:3. The magnitude of his loss cannot be overstated.
My wife and I loved Mr. Puddy to the utmost degree, or at least to the utmost degree you can love a cat that pees on your pillows. There were times when we wished for his death, and there were times when we wanted to kill him ourselves, but as more and more of our friends have children, I’m realizing that this is really the norm.
Mr. Puddy was our firstborn. My wife and I got him nine years ago on our first Christmas together from a friend who worked in a vet’s office. Peanut, as he was called then, had been brought in to be euthanized due to what his previous owners called a “bad disposition,” which is a euphemism for “he’s crotchety and pees everywhere.” We didn’t know that at the time.
All we knew was that a seemingly innocent cat was about to be put to death, and his name was Peanut. If there is one rule to live by in this world, it’s that you just don’t kill anything named Peanut.
We could tell right away that he was a dignified cat, the kind you could easily imagine in a top hat and monocle. But not, as we found out later, the kind that would actually wear a top hat if you put one on him. He would wear fake reindeer antlers at Christmastime, but that might say more about the Velcro chinstrap than Mr. Puddy’s yuletide spirit.
Mr. Puddy began peeing on our stuff the instant he touched ground in our house. Rugs, mats, recliners, couches, slippers – nothing was sacred. Some our friends were quick to judge, especially when he would pee on, say, their coats, or maybe their children. But those kinds of things really shouldn’t be left lying around our house anyway.
The truth was, we loved Mr. Puddy immediately, even if he was sort of an a-hole. He was ours, the first thing that was really, truly ours. Sure, he had his problems, but I could say the same thing about our friends’ kids. At least Mr. Puddy never peed his own pants.
Mr. Puddy’s other problem was that he ate obsessively. Eventually, he got so fat that he couldn’t even clean himself, resulting in a greasy, dandery stripe of hair running down his back that ranked just below Gary Busey’s teeth on the grossness scale. His fatness also made him lose the ability to meow like a normal cat. Instead, he emitted something closer to an “ech,” which we thought was hilarious. We would use it as a party trick, and people loved it. “Go get that cat,” they’d say. “Make him do that thing that’s funny!”
“Ech,” Mr. Puddy would say, and the room would erupt.
This became less funny the day that we realized that the “ech” was happening because, while Puddy had ballooned in size, we had never thought to loosen his collar. Underneath it was a perfectly bald ring that ran completely around his neck. We felt appropriately terrible, although it did make him look like clergy, which was sort of funny.
Years went by, and Puddy continued in his ways, peeing on our most valuable belongings with quiet, haughty pride. Then one day last July, he stopped eating. Just stopped. We were concerned, and took him to the vet’s office, where the doctor conducted a series of blood tests and x-rays. The conclusion was that Mr. Puddy was fantastically, colossally constipated, literally the most constipated cat the doctor had ever seen. This called for an overnight stay at the veterinary’s “feline resort,” which is like a human resort, except that instead of being pampered with massages and chocolates, Mr. Puddy was given a nonstop series of enemas.
We brought him home the following day, full of optimism that our now substantially lighter cat would resume eating. And he did. There was joy all around. The next day, however, the doctor called me at work to deliver some bad news: Some post-cat-enema testing revealed a tumor. It was cancer that was blocking Mr. Puddy’s intestines. Cancer that would require an operation that a 17-year-old cat just wouldn’t survive.
Within a few days, Puddy stopped eating again, stopped drinking and started bleeding out of his nose. By the time we took him back to the vet just a few days later, he was sunken and emaciated. The vet encouraged us to put him down.
Mr. Puddy was 8 years old when we’d adopted him, meaning we had ultimately more than doubled his time on earth. He’d had a good run. There was nothing else we could do. Plus, there wasn’t that much left in our house for him to pee on anyway.
Putting Mr. Puddy to sleep was far worse than I had imagined. We wept openly and cradled his little
body, warm and limp in the towel. His little chest was as still as an empty cradle. It wasn’t even real. Eventually, we signaled to the nurse that we were ready to let him go. We said a final, tearful goodbye and handed him over.
That’s when we saw it, a little yellow puddle glistening on the leather couch between us. It was pee. Mr. Puddy’s last pee. His final protest against the indignities of the world. One last hurrah, one last middle finger in the air, like a punctuation mark on his life.
“Farewell, cruel world!” he said. “Ech!”
One more ruined couch, one more notch in his belt. We laughed like hell. And somewhere up in kitty heaven, so did Mr. Puddy.
Next, we secured a World Series victory for the Phillies, primarily by drinking lots of beer and sending good vibes through our TV screen. And then within the same week we delivered the state of Pennsylvania to Barack Obama, which in turn got him elected as the next President of the United States of America. He called us that night from Chicago to ask if he could mention us during his acceptance speech, and also to offer a position in his cabinet, probably as Secretary of Awesome, but we declined on account of our humility and the fact that he didn't really call.
Team Last Call: 3.
General Motors, Tampa Bay Rays and Sarah Palin: 0.
However, while we've been on an enormous and unparalleled winning streak, we're not about to start resting on our laurels, mostly because we don't know what a laurel is. Instead, we're going to focus on our next mission, one that might prove to be our most challenging to date: helping the Philadelphia Eagles become the next Super Bowl champions.
We realize it might not be "realistic" or even "mathematically possible," but still, by adhering to the three point plan detailed below, we are confident we'll be bringing that trophy home, maybe.
Step one on the road to a Super Bowl victory is to purge Central Pennsylvania of Steelers fans. These people have worked their way into the mid-state like a toenail fungus. They're all over the place, with their bad attitudes and their stupid towels. They're just so … mavericky. They should change the name to the Pittsburgh 'Publicans.
Converting these people to Eagles fans is more than a mission, it's a moral imperative. We need all available resources to win this Super Bowl, and too much time and energy is being wasted on rooting for a team that wears gold tights.
Converting Steelers fans will not be an easy task. Don't be surprised if they get angry with you, or try to lash out at you in some underhanded, cheating kind of way. The Eagles did, after all, completely and utterly trounce their team in September, and they're probably still pretty embarrassed about just how terrible and idiotic and awful we made them look. So definitely don't bring up that game. The one where we totally crushed them.
A good place to start is by trying to understand where Steelers fans are coming from. Once you understand that, that's where the healing begins.
Think about it: If you lived in Central PA, and the closest major city (Philadelphia) hadn't won any kind of sports championship since 1983, wouldn't you be upset? Wouldn't you turn your back on your community, your friends and neighbors and loved ones, and desperately latch on to whatever team out there is winning championships, any team, anywhere, no matter how far away it was located?
Of course not, but Steelers fans would, and did. Now, some of these fans will say things like, "I've been a fan of the Steelers since I was a kid!" or "My whole family is made of Steelers fans!" or "I grew up in Pittsburgh!" These people are lying. Steelers fans are liars. And once you understand that fact, that's where the healing begins.
It's easy to get angry with a Steelers fan, or to think of him as something less than a fully developed human, like the singer of Nickelback. But that's the wrong attitude to take. The truth is, ultimately, you can't blame a Steelers fan for being a Steelers fan any more than you can blame, say, a tapeworm for being a tapeworm. Granted, a tapeworm doesn't technically have a "brain" or the "ability to formulate a thought," so there's another similarity. But still, compassion is what we need. Because everyone makes mistakes. And once you understand that, that's where the healing begins.
Once these people are brought back "home," once they've seen the error of their ways and have thrown out their truly terrible towels, we Central Pennsylvanians can once again unite under the great banner of the Philadelphia Eagles, like the bible says. So, that's step one.
Step two on the road to victory is to boost the Philadelphia Eagles' morale. Because the fact is, in the team's 75-plus-year history as a franchise, they have never, ever, under any circumstances, not once ever, won a Super Bowl.
So as you can imagine, the players' self-esteem isn't exactly soaring. This is exacerbated by the seemingly endless number of malicious jokes circulating about the team and its complete inability to not screw up – jokes that should never, under any circumstances, be repeated, including the following:
Q: What do you call 47 people sitting around a TV watching the Super Bowl?
A: The Philadelphia Eagles.
Q: How do you keep a Philadelphia Eagle out of your yard?
A: Put up goal posts.
Q: Why doesn't Camden have a professional football team?
A: Because then Philadelphia would want one.
So stop telling these jokes. Remember, a confident team is a winning team. Although Sarah Palin was pretty confident, too.
Step three is to just plain steal the trophy. I mean just straight-up sneaking into the winning team's clubhouse when no one's looking and grabbing the trophy right off its little pedestal. Because really, that's the only way we're going to bring that thing home this year. Or any year, really. And if we get caught, we can just frame some Steelers fans.
They should probably be in jail anyway.
But the fact is that I watched it, and that was wrong. In my defense, I was up late working, and a rerun just happened to come on one of the three channels I get, because I'm the one guy in North America still using rabbit ears. "Going down with the ship" is a noble way to put it. Plus, the remote control was totally at the other end of the couch.
At first, I just let the show play in the background, glancing up from my laptop every now and then whenever someone said a word like "orgasm" or "boobs," which happened approximately 200 times a minute.
Sample dialogue:
Woman 1: "Your boobs look great. Did you orgasm last night? Men are dumb."
Woman 2: "My orgasm was great. Men are dumb. Boobs."
But then, subconsciously at first, I started getting caught up in the storyline – something about Sarah Jessica Parker hooking up with an old boyfriend, and then Kim Cattrall hooking up with an old boyfriend, and then someone else hooking up with an old boyfriend, and then the girls getting together to drink cosmos and say "orgasm" and "boobs" some more.
I could actually feel myself getting dumber as I watched, but was able to justify it as the price you sometimes have to pay for escapism, ranking it somewhere on the brain damage scale between sniffing glue and shouting "Drill, baby, drill." And it was just one episode, so I figured there was no harm done. I did worry for a moment about what kind of affect the show was having on my dog, but he was busy licking his tender parts, so I figured he was fine. Or was he doing it BECAUSE of the show? I wasn't sure.
Sex and the City is the kind of show that you can hate on principal, whether you've seen it or not; it's self-indulgent, silly and, like Sarah Palin, unapologetically aimed at the lowest common denominator of viewers – the kind that would brainlessly lap up an over-romanticized version of female empowerment in which a gaggle of 40-something ladies are morphed from sex objects into catty, high heel-wearing predators. Fierce! To make it worse, these ladies spend their time prowling a fictional world in which all men are portrayed as little more than pathetically unaware slabs of dudeness who can be lured into any bed with a can of Bud. But the joke's on them – some of us don't even need the Bud. So you just wasted, like, a couple bucks.
As I continued to watch the show, however, I realized how this portrayal of reality was actually viable, how the characters, in between their many, many orgasms, actually had some thoughtful things to say. I caught myself thinking things like, "I've seen worse," and, "Wow, this actually isn't a total disaster. Not bad." My expectations were set so low that, just by virtue of that fact that it wasn't a complete train wreck, Sex and the City seemed like a success. So there's another link to Sarah Palin.
A few nights later, by which I mean the very next night, I was doing some more late-night writing on the couch when, to my complete surprise, the clock struck 12:30 a.m. and Sex and the City came on again. Naturally, what with me being a dude and all, I wanted to turn it off as quickly as possible. The problem was, the remote was under my dog, who, when not licking his tenders, had spent his evening expelling gas at an alarming rate thanks to a doughnut left too close to the edge of the table. I decided to just call it a wash and watch the show.
Next night, same thing. There I was, sitting in front of the TV, no longer bothering to pretend I was working, watching Sex and the City and nudging the volume down notch by notch so my sleeping wife wouldn't learn my dark secret. I was hooked. It felt dirty, like I was sneaking out to my garage with a flashlight and a box full of gay porn. Only, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, I wasn't gay. I just sort of kind of didn't totally hate watching this show. What did that mean? Oh, I was confused.
They say that a habit only becomes a problem when you start doing it alone. That's how I knew I was in trouble. Night after night, I sat there on my couch waiting for Sex and the City to come on with a sickening mixture of guilt and titillation, like a Republican lurking in a men's room stall.
But I wasn't totally alone. There in the dark, with my dog softly tooting in his sleep, I had Carrie, Miranda, Samantha and Charlotte, laughing, crying, constantly orgasming and doggedly working their way through life's important questions, one boob at a time. Questions like: When Jack broke up with Carrie on a Post-it Note (of all things!), was it really because of her hair scrunchie?
I had to see that episode twice before I could really decide. Which means, of course, that I had indulged in my disgusting habit long enough for the reruns to become re-reruns. It was a terrible period in my life, full of self-loathing, sleep deprivation and denial. And it might still be going on today had my wife, who apparently wasn't fooled for a second, not finally confronted me about it. And by "confronted" I mean "totally made fun of me and threatened to tell our friends that I stayed up to watch Sex and the City." But I only stayed up AND watched it, I argued. She didn't buy it.
As Carrie once wrote in her column, "Maybe our mistakes are what make our fate." I'm not really sure what that means – not even the show's scriptwriters know – but it sounds neat. And sometimes neat-sounding nonsense is exactly what you want to hear. Just ask Joe Six-Pack.
But in a weird way, my mistake really did make my fate. If I hadn't made my dark descent into the world of Sex and the City, I would never have been able to write this column, which hopefully brought some joy to your life. And like I've always said, "Joy is the snowy mountain that life skis down."
This year, we couldn't decide if we should dress up as a zombie or George W. Bush, so we decided to do both and buy a John McCain mask. It came with a complimentary trophy wife and a bottle of old-man smell. Unfortunately, it was almost 20 years past its expiration date. The trophy wife, I mean.
We know what you're thinking. "Here goes Team Last Call with yet another politically slanted column full of unfair – albeit borderline genius – jabs at the Republican Party, which I support because I am uninformed, out of touch and incontinent, and probably overweight."
Well, you're waaaaay off. This column isn't about swaying your opinion one way or the other. All we want to do today is to present the facts in a "fair and balanced" way, like Bill O'Reilly, but without the blotchy red face and compulsive lying.
We are not here to support Barack Obama, even if he can stabilize our economy, make our country safer, establish universal health care, reverse global warming, turn water into wine, raise the dead and give every American his own private mansion made of gingerbread and lollipops. Neither are we here to support John McCain – that's what his walker is for. We're just here to call it like it is.
You're not going to see us spreading any vicious rumors or lies, like the ones the Republicans have been spreading about Obama – how he is a terrorist, how he won't salute the flag, how he was sworn into the senate on the Koran instead of the Bible. I think my personal favorite is the McCain ad implying that Barack Obama is the antichrist. Totally. He totally is. Nice work. You nailed it. Oh, and he also co-authored the communist manifesto, eats kittens for breakfast and sneezes unicorns. So watch out for that.
There's also a good Republican line about how Barack Obama is going to raise your taxes. The part they don't mention is that your taxes will only be raised if you make more than $250,000 a year. If you make that much money and still can't deal with paying your taxes, you could always consider selling one of your Hummers. Or, in John McCain's case, one of your seven houses. If you can remember where you left them.
But you won't see us feeding you lies like that. Or lies like how McCain's attack dog running mate, Sarah Palin, wants to prohibit abortions even in the case of rape or incest – the kind of self-righteous stance people usually adopt until someone close to them is, you know, raped.
Other lies we won't feed you:
Palin wants to solve our oil addiction by drilling for more oil in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Palin has supported the Alaskan Independence Party, whose primary goal is to secede from the United States.
Palin has referred to the war in Iraq as "a task from God."
Palin doesn't think humans are responsible for global warming.
Palin's state leads the country in per-capita pork barrel spending.
Palin's gubernatorial inauguration was sponsored by oil giant BP.
And the reason we won't invent those lies is because they're actually all true. And here everyone thought her biggest problem was going to be her knocked-up daughter. Bonus irony: Palin supports abstinence-only sex-education. Oops.
But not everything the Republicans have been saying is a lie. They've made some really valid points about Obama, including the fact that he's entirely too good at public speaking (always a red flag) and the fact that he's simply way too popular to ever win the popular vote.
Clearly, Obama has faults. He's made mistakes. On the other side of the fairness coin, so has McCain. Like how he accidentally ran an attack ad that included a split-second frame showing Obama with the letters "H-A-N-G" above his head. Whoops! And there was the day in August when he defined the middle class as people who make less than $5 million a year. Zoinks!
But McCain's got his strengths, too, like how he's such a zany maverick. He's not afraid to rebel against the establishment, even when he is the establishment. Sure, he's voted with Bush over 90 percent of the time, but for the other less-than-10 percent of the time, whoo! He's crazy! He's a lone ranger! A loose cannon!
He's also, if elected President, about one french fry away from making Sarah Palin the leader of the free world. If you want to fixate on terror, as is the Republicans' wont, this one's a doozey. The self-dubbed "barracuda" proved in her acceptance speech that she can throw out bloody chum by the bucket-full to Republican sharks, but it's questionable what she has to offer beyond the rhetorical nuggets written for her by Bush speechwriter Matthew Scully. Once the teleprompter disappears, will her round-faced cuteness and her state's "proximity to Russia" really guide her through sticky foreign policy snafus? For her recently deployed son's sake, let's hope so. If nothing else, I guess she could always mock our enemies to death.
The upcoming presidential election is the most important one of our time. We Americans have a very big job to do on November 4, and that job is to not screw it up. For the third time in a row.
Like we said before, we at Team Last Call aren't here to "choose sides." Far be it from us to declare who's right and who's Republican. All we want to do is to present the objective truth, which just happens to be that Barack Obama should and must be the next President of the United States.
