Brains!

Thanks to Mr. Banks for this amazingly great video. How did he know I loved zombies?

Scared yet?

This lovely lady, dressed to impress, is Debra Cagan. She works for Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, in charge of Coalition Affairs concerning Iraq and Iran.

This past September she met with six British Members of Parliament visiting the states and told them that she hates Iranians.

That's right. According to the UK's Daily Mail, Cagan told the MPs that "I hate all Iranians."

As one MP reported, "She seemed more keen on saying she didn't like Iranians than that the US had no plans to attack Iran."

Another MP said: "I formed the impression that some in America are looking for an excuse to attack Iran. It was very alarming."

And this: "It was very sobering to hear from the horse's mouth how the US sees the situation."

Of course, if they had met with George Bush they could have heard it from the horse's ass.

War with Iran.

Happy Halloween, bitches.

Liberal Media

If you don't know Fred Hiatt, he's the editor who turned the Washington Post's editorial page into a vocal supporter of the Bush administration with editorials and right-wing columnists like Charles Krauthammer and Robert Novak.

If you don't know Rick Kaplan, he's the guy who turned CNN into Fox News Lite and then moved on to MSNBC and filled that cable channel with conservative pundits like Tucker Carlson and Joe Scarborough. This was the same time MSNBC fired Phil Donahue, the guy with the highest ratings.

Yes, in a time when the New York Times trumpets the war with Judith Miller and her sole source, Curveball, and when two columnists, one in Texas and one in Oregon, get fired for criticizing George Bush's no-show on 9/11, Dan Rather gets the heave-ho, and General Batiste loses his CBS job because he dares to say bad things about our uber-sensitive petit dauphin, some idiots talk about "the liberal media" as if it's 1974 and Rupert Murdoch is still just a soft-porn purveyor from Oz.

I do think our media is biased. Toward the stupid. Latest case in point is 60 Minutes' Leslie Stahl. Watch the video up there as she does the American journalist thing and asks the president of France about his marital difficulties, as if it's anyone's goddamn business but Sarkozy and le squeeze primer.

Now ask yourself what other questions you'd like to ask the president of France. I can think of plenty.

What the fuck has happened to our media? Has America become so infantilized that the only thing that holds our interest is gossip? Have we really become this stupid? Or is it that news departments and their corporate overseers just think we're stupid?

Next time you watch some journalist cover the day's news, think of this: It costs next to nothing to cover events like fires, bombings, press conferences and celebrity fallout. It costs money to investigate ideas, like public policy.

For instance, do you believe, as Kennedy famously said, that you owe something to your country or do you believe, as Milton Friedman and his Republican acolytes do, that we owe nothing to our nation except our success?

Are you your brother's keeper? Or do you say I got mine, now let him get his?

Now there's a question I'd like Leslie Stahl to ask. Unfortunately, she'd probably ask Paris Hilton.

But Is It Enough?

Have you noticed that no matter what you do, if you're a liberal, it's never enough?

Conservatives are never satisfied. The same people who can make excuses for every one of George Bush's disastrous screw-ups, find fault with everyone else because it's just not enough.


Sure, Valerie Plame was a CIA operative, and the administration leaked her name to the press in order to discredit her husband, but was she secret enough for it to be a crime? I think so, but the Bushies don't.


Yes, Al Gore went to Vietnam when Dick Cheney had "other priorities," but Al wasn't in the infantry so he, according to right wingers, was never in enough danger for his service to count. So he should have just stayed home like George Bush, Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney and those other rough-tough guys.


And John Kerry went to Vietnam, lead men in combat, saved a man's life while under fire and was wounded, but did he bleed enough to get a Purple Heart? Apparently not.


Max Cleland went to Vietnam too, fought the enemy and was horribly wounded in service to his country, but according to many on the right, Max just wasn't tough enough to serve in Congress along with all those GOP chickenhawks.


Now we have this 12-year-old kid, Graeme Frost, who the Democrats made the poster boy for the benefits of the SCHIP program. But, people like Michelle Malkin ask, are his parents poor enough for help, especially when the lampreys who make up our insurance industry have refused him coverage?



No, I guess not. But Michelle sure is crazy enough. Yow.



So here we are, on the cusp of an election and what is it the Republican candidates are asking each other? Are you conservative enough? John McCain, another veteran, was criticized for not being loyal enough to George Bush, so I guess he's out.

I don't know about you, but I've had enough.

In fact, I'm full up.

Livin' On Tulsa Time.

While we're waiting for Molly and her band to give me the official decision (and some tracks I can post) let's take a look at what's happening in Tulsa, where my sister and mother live.

We ventured to Tulsa for my mother's birthday a few weeks ago. I'd never been to Oklahoma except to whiz through on Rt. 66, where I got my kicks in places other than Oklahoma and that great waste of planetary space, the panhandle of Texas which is bigger than the moon and a lot less interesting.

Tulsa was built on oil money and Christain fundamentalism, two things you might not put together, given that whole earth being six thousand years old conundrum. It's the home of Oral Roberts University, where God ran a protection racket a few years ago when the Reverend Oral told his congregants that if they didn't pony up a few million bucks, God was going to whack him.

They ponied up and God called off his goons. Hallelujah.

If you've never seen the good reverend in action, watch him explain hhow sex works in this truly miraculous video clip.

Amazing, isn't it? I've gone on record about the Family Values crowd and their freaky bedroom behavior making me, a guy who once thought of himself as a libertine, look like a cloistered monk in comparison.

So you can imagine my surprise when we learned that, not surprisingly, the sexual hijinx continues. Allegedly. See, Oral retired as head of Oral Roberts University and passed his throbbing scepter to his son, Dick, and I'm not making that up. This is Dick's wife, Lindsay.

From this picture, Lindsay is an attractive child of God, preaching the Word. Lindsay has written several books, but my favorite title is this: Dear God, I Love To Eat, But I Sure Do Hate To Cook cookbook.

She is a member of the Oral Roberts University Board of Regents and is quoted as saying, “I am dedicated to God and willing to do whatever He calls me to do.” That, allegedly, includes sleeping with one of the local fraternity boys.

Wonkette has more here.

My personal relationship with God was strenthened in Tulsa when we went to pick my mom up for breakfast Sunday morning. There on the corner, a local church had turned out to protest abortion. Now, I'm no fan of abortion. I don't know anyone who is. And I am a fan of the First Amendment, so I applauded the vigorous exercise of that freedom by this local church even while I was wondering how many abortions take place outside a church in Tulsa.

We went to breakfast at an IHOP where they have discounts for large people, or so it seems. When we returned to my mother's place I saw that the abortion protesters were gone. They, apparently, had been heartily rained upon while we were just a few miles away, in sunshine, eating our flapjacks.

That's right. God rained on the protesters while sparing the heathens skipping church.

I think I'm beginning to like Tulsa.

More as work calms down to a small tsunami and I get caught up from the trifecta of traveling, vacation and sickness.

Show me a man who wears a flag lapel pin...

While I'm digging myself out of the big pile of dookie that's accumulated while out*, watch this piece from Bill Maher's show.

*This may take a while.

Look what I picked up in Tulsa!

To be fair, I probably snuffled up this nasty cold virus in one of the lovely airports I've enjoyed lately, but last Friday it took me out.

I've missed work, I've whined, I've doubled up on vodka and Nyquil, and worse, I missed a local appearance by our Hellfire Homeboy Dusty Rhoades.

I hope lots of NC Hellions showed up and bought dozens of copies of Dusty's new book, Safe and Sound.

And Dusty? Be happy that I didn't introduce you to my new little friend.

Modern Air Travel

In the past week I've gone through six airports.

Oh joy.

Crowded coach, long delays, overpriced airport food, surly flight attendants, the gaseous seatmate, the scowling TSA employee just hoping you'll say something that will justify a cavity search and the screaming baby that is FFA-mandated for every flight.

I was going to write a long piece here about how flying is like going Greyhound at 30,000 feet, with a hint of Stalin (papers please), but you've heard it all before. You've been there.


And I have a ton of work on my desk. So, I'll just say I'm happy to be home.

In a few days, when I can see some daylight, I'll report on the trip to Tulsa, complete with Mom birthday pics, a story about God's keen sense of humor, and the announcement of a band name for Molly's nine-piece soul group. Until then,

Buh-bye.

Time for some karmic balance.

Yesterday's post was a bit caustic, I admit, and as I'm flying several times in the upcoming few days, I thought it best to end the week by tossing a little light into the darkness. So here, in the hopes that HR will call of its lawyers, is a cosmic corrective cuteness buffer.*



He's flying! Look out for that truck!


This little guy has his heart set on the NBA. Don't tell him that elephants are the only mammals who can't jump!


He's cute until he runs up your pants leg!


Even at this tender age, these cubs brought down a full grown German Shepherd! Awwwww.


Panda baby! Panda baby!

And Cup-O-Kitten Soup! Yum!

That's it for the week. Be back next week with Tales of Horror from Tulsa where we'll determine if Oklahoma is indeed OK or if maybe the residents shouldn't set their sights a little higher.

Until then, be adequate! OK!

*Cuteness Buffer, a trademarked feature of Jen Jordan's Human Under Construction.

In honor of Ann Coulter's new book.

Ann Coulter has a new book out today and she'll hit all the news shows and say outrageous things and get more press and sell more books than you or I will ever sell in a lifetime. It doesn't hurt that her mentor, Richard Mellon Scaife is a billionaire who made his money the old fashioned way - he inherited it.

I went through this before, but for those of you who came in late, let me explain how Scaife's billions made Ann a New York Times best-selling author.

When you look at the Times list, you'll notice that some books have a tiny dagger by the title. This means that the book was sold in mass quantities. So when Ann was just a struggling young plagiarist and needed a skinny leg up, her old pal Scaife put her in touch with Regnery Press, the publisher who specializes in stinking sacks of right-wing ordure.

So Regnery publishes Ann's book. Scaife buys up a few hundred thousand copies. Ann, with a dagger, rushes to the top of the NY Times list and suddenly she gets invited on all the cable talk fests because she's a, you know, best selling author.

Ann gets TV time. Her fans swoon over her biting wit, like calling John Edwards a fag, they rush out and buy more books, proving that she's indeed a best selling author and America's soul gets just a little blacker.

That Scaife then pours his copies into a sinkhole in Indonesia, forever fouling the groundwater, doesn't matter. Ann's on the list. She's got cred.

Which proves that for all the many outrageous and provocative things Ann's ever said, the smartest thing to ever come out of her mouth is still Richard Mellon Scaife's dick.

The video is Hamell on Trial, one man using his First Amendment rigts to stand tall by sinking to an admitted new low. But I warn you, it is not work safe. Put on the headphones.

Enjoy.

Name this band and win a prize.

Since you have generously helped me through some tough times lately, I think you deserve to hear some really good news.

(two positive posts in a row? impossible.)

My daughter's band made its debut last night. It's a 9-piece Memphis soul band with a kick-ass horn section and one little white girl with a great big voice in front. The place was packed, they played one set and blew the room away.

And no, I'm not biased.

I'd show you a picture I took with my new cell phone but I can't figure out how to send it to my email. But other people did take pictures and there might be a recording of some of their songs which I will post as soon as I get them, being a proud father and all.

Molly certainly has earned the right to sing the blues and when she tackled Otis Redding's Pain In My Heart you could tell she'd been there. She has a natural presence, is comfortable fronting the band and was having the time of her life. She's worked hard putting this band together and she deserved all the fan adulation.

It's about time good things came her way.

And today she starts a new job. Yay!

Today, I'm calling all Planeteers to help out the band and perhaps gain a bit of immortality. The band has no name. It's a soul band, with an emphasis on that Stax Volt horn-powered sound, and so far they've kicked around Souled Out, The Bull City Soul Revue, Is That Suede? (Molly's favorite, but the band said nah), and a few other soul variations.

So, name this band and I'll send you something. A book by a friend, maybe a recording of the band, I don't know yet, but it'll be good. And you'll have bragging rights down at the pub.

So send me your names and if the band chooses yours, you're a winner!

UPDATE: Apparently the unnamed band made quite an impression. Owners of neighboring bars have asked them to play their places and they're lining up gigs all over town. Pretty cool. So keep those names coming. I'll keep you posted.

You're soaking in it.

For the first time in over a decade, I'm enthusiastic about my work.

No, not my fiction writing. That's an obsession, my great white whale. My work is writing copy and if you feel so moved, write your redundancy joke here.

Last week I was talking to a colleague about the grand years of advertising. Our conversation was sprinkled with names like Dan Wieden, Ed McCabe and Hal Riney, people who changed my world. When we speak of these people, largely unknown outside the biz, we speak the way music geeks talk about Keith Moon or Don Van Vliet.

I know most of you probably agree with Bill Hicks when he advised all marketing people to kill themselves, but if you'll indulge me, I want to take a quick look at how we got here.

That classic poster up there was created for Maxell by art director Lars Anderson. The agency was Scali, McCabe Sloves, one of the first New York agencies to take the ad world out of the hands of Ivy League WASPs like the guys you see in Mad Men, and put it into the hands of kids with names that were Irish, Italian and Jewish.

This was in the day of Ring Around the Collar, when big companies advertised to your mom as if she were an idiot. A P&G brand manager once told me their standard formula was 2CK. When I asked what 2CK meant, he told me it involves two women talking together in a kitchen, but in much less-enlightened language.

So when Scali started writing to real people and Doyle Dane Bernbach went against all the big-finned, big breasted, Detroit advertising with this, it caused a revolution.

It lasted a few years and then, in the 70's, pants cuffs got big and brains got small again and advertising became as boring as disco. But like punk, surprising things were happening in surprising places, and while the dinosaurs lumbered about in the cocaine haze of Studio 54, eager young mammals in places like Portland, Minneapolis, Richmond and Seattle were re-inventing advertising with smart work.



This is when I started, learning from giants like Tom McElligott who told us we can outsmart our competition, not outspend them. He also taught us that you didn't need a big client to win big awards.

So I wrote ads like this one with art director Mike Sellers. It was for the Durham County Literacy Council and yes, we won awards.

Great work was being done all over the place and it was exciting to be a part of it. Then I started making money. And I took jobs for money. And my love for the business dimmed as I started working for people whose only passion was making money. I burned out and I quit.

I started writing novels. I still worked part time for a small ad agency where I wrote this ad for a real estate developer. You can still see Tom McElligott's influence (as well as our blatant theft of the layout from an Art Director named Tracy Wong).

But writers have a hard time paying the rent with novels, so I'm working again. I came to this job as a temp, then as a full-timer, happy to reduce my patient wife's angst with a steady paycheck.

This is not a traditional ad agency and that has its benefits. It also meant that for the longest time they didn't quite know what to do with me. Then they hired a new creative director. He understands my passion for the business. He knows who Jay Chiat is and why he's important.

For the first time in years I'm excited about the possibility of doing smart work. It's kind of like going through a really ugly divorce and for the first time being tempted to date again. I like this.

Do you love your work? If you do, do you know how lucky you are?

And are there ads that you love?

Talk to me.

Return From The Edge of the Earth.

Standing at the very edge of the continent, I abandoned e-mails, laptops and phones. It's going to take me a few days to figure out how all this stuff works again.

I am but a simple man of the beach. Your modern ways confuse and frighten me.

Couples.

Today is Jeff Shelby's 8th anniversary. What is the 8th? Jello?

I don't know what amazes me more, that Jeff found a woman who agreed to share her life with him, or that any couple finds a way to stay together through the stresses of kids, mortgages, lost jobs, ill health, in-laws, sleeping habits, sex, incontinent dogs, odd hobbies, televised sports, and the unrealistic expectations of women everywhere. But I'm happy that at least half the time, it works.

I'm going to be best man at a wedding this weekend. I have no idea what is expected of a best man. Maybe I should look that up before Sunday.

My old friend, Jerry (regular readers will know him as Secret Dead Artist), is marrying Heather on the Outer Banks, which will be very cool. That Heather is younger, better-looking, smarter and taller than Jerry has all of us shaking our heads in wonder at Jerry's good fortune.

Mazel Tov.

Last April, Jenny and I celebrated 27 years together, a phenomenol thing if you consider that Jenny could have, to quote Mark Twain, laid a trap in the night and caught twelve more able men. It's been great, but it hasn't been easy. They say nothing worthwhile is, but I find drinking more than worthwhile, and surprisingly easy.



In that spirit, I raise my glass to all the happy couples out there. If you're lucky enough to be one of them, take the time to tell your patient SO that your life would not be half as rich, full or wonderfully complicated without her (or him).

We all think we'll have another day, but we all know there's no guarantee, don't we.

Here's to marriage. And here's to the daily miracles that make it possible.

Happy Anniversary, Jeff.

And to Jerry, bon voyage. It's a trip I highly recommend.

So, when do we get our health care, eh?

According to the New York Times, this

now equals this:



and the US dollar's dropped to an all time low against the Euro. So if you've got travel plans you might want to cart around another suitcase full of greenbacks so you'll have enough cash on hand to buy a Guiness.

Our northern cousins get a loon on their money and we get a loon in the White House.

This can't be good.

Stop me before I kill again.

I murdered an old friend last night. It was this 1948 National amp you see up there. In my idiocy, I was packing up after rehearsal, got distracted, forgot and backed over it.

It is toast.

I'm happy it wasn't a child or a dog. It was just an amp.

An amplifier I've played through for years, as much of an instrument as my guitars or my box of harps. I don't know how I'll replace it.

Compared with other things that have happened lately, this is a very small thing, barely rising above annoyance.

Still, I loved that old amp.

I hope your year has been better than mine because so far, 2007 has sucked.

I live for stories like this.

In Minneapolis, a state known to be only slightly less polite than Canada, a guy waiting for a bus assaulted another guy with a folder from an anger management class.

Sweet.

The police say Angry Guy was at a bus stop when he started yelling at a 59-year-old woman. When she took out her cell phone, Angry Guy knocked her down. When a second guy tried to help, Angry Guy hit him with the folder.

Angry Guy has been charged with felony assault. This, not surprisingly, is his third assault charge in 18 months, and he's been convicted twice of domestic assault.

"Our hope is that the court will see fit to allow him to finish his anger management class in jail," a cop spokesman said between giggles. "Clearly he has issues."

Happy Friday, people. Let's hope for an uneventful weekend.

Wanted for arson.

This woman, Janiva Magness, burned down the house last night.

She and her band had people dancing past midnight (on a Thursday!) at the Blue Bayou and if she plays anywhere within a day's drive of where you live, drop everything and go. You'll thank me.

Learn more about this great talent here and here.

Thanks, Janiva, and come back any time. We love you here in North Carolina.

Live Lard!

Thanks to Ed for my new watchword.

Live Lard!

And if you want to see Ed, check him out here. He's the drummer sitting in the aura of light, just as God intended.

Crap jobs.

I was inspired to write this by an earlier post over at Bryon Quertermous' place. He was complaining about his job working a call center and asked what lousy jobs we've had. That got me thinking about all the crap jobs I've had and I had to post this (expanded) response over here.

I caddied when I was 15. I weighed 125 pounds and had to carry two large bags to make 50 cents an hour. That lasted until a guy threw his putter at me.

I took my first real job at a roadside hot dog stand where I made 65 cents an hour and all I could eat. At 15 I could eat a lot, but not enough to make that job pay.

When I was 18 I worked in a warehouse loading grocery store trucks from 11 at night to 7 in the morning, all night slinging heavy cartons into the backs of tractor trailers. The dust was so thick you could sculpt it and there was never a moment when there wasn't a truck to be loaded. I made 2.12/hr.

I worked for Uncle Sam for 11 cents an hour. That was probably the worst job and none of the skills I learned was marketable. Huh.

After the Army I worked short order in midtown Manhattan, spiked ties for the Erie Lackawanna RR, set columns on construction sites and managed a janitorial crew at night.

All hard work, low pay and long hours.

The truth is, I actually enjoyed some of the work. Construction wasn't bad and I made good money working on the railroad. Short order was a sure way to get fed, which at that time in my life was a good thing. All of these jobs gave me people and places to write about.

But I wonder, do young people take these kinds of jobs today? I don't know if they do. I pass construction sites and see nothing by Latinos. I go to restaurants and see the same.

What about you? What were some of the worst jobs that you've had? And are today's crap jobs all that different?

Talk to me.