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After spending the morn reading pieces about how the Korean peninsula will greet 2004 as a slick, reflective surface, I was almost surprised to look up from the laptop and see news about Iraq on the TV. Oh, right, that. I don’t know about you, but to me this all feels like one king-hell bout of clusterfargery without historical comparison. In the future, no one will say “this feels like the 30s again.” That’ll seem like LeisureWorld - sure, the whole world tumbled into the ditch, but it took them ten years. They had hell to pay but the minimum monthlies were modest. It’s as if the peace we bought in the 90s was financed by Fat Tony, and however much we pay tomorrow it won’t even get close to touching the nut. It’s vigorish from here to eternity.
It’s giving me lurid dreams - they stay with me all day, bleed into the next. I’m still enjoying a dream I had Sunday morning: I’d been invited to screen a movie. It starred Ashley Judd as a minor CIA analyst who also had a career as a pop singer - but she was a down-to-earth gal, brainy and sweet. Once the movie got the obligatory music-video sequence out of the way, it was a fairly interesting action film, as Our Miss Judd found herself caught up in a Web of Intrigue. Then I was called back to see the version they’d edited based on preview comments. Ashley Judd had been removed entirely from the movie, and replaced with some indistinguishable male action star. Get this: the original movie had opened with Our Miss Judd going to work at the CIA, a montage scene with a Mary-Tyler-Moore opening credits vibe; it was replaced with a fight scene, in which our new hero grappled with an axe-wielding assassin.
The assassin throws the axe at our hero. Our hero whips out . . . a Sharpie, and draws a caricature of his opponent on the wall.
The axe embeds itself in the forehead of the caricature. Our hero removes the axe and flings it at the assassin - hitting him right in the forehead!
The audience goes NUTS and I’m thinking what the HELL people -
Alarm clock. I’m brushing my teeth; my wife is in the shower, and I say “I dreamed about this movie in which Ashley Judd was just so incredibly edited out it wasn’t funny.”
“WHAT?” she said. It’s hard to hear someone when the water’s running and the shower’s blasting.
“I’ll tell you later.”
“WHAT?”
It never did come up again, since my wife’s morning is dedicated to the simple act of getting out the door. Mine is dedicated to getting down the coffee. This week it’s some Mexican blend that starts with X. Bought it on a whim. It’s xorible. And what do we have for cereal this week? Froot Loops with sugar-infused styro-flecks. Why were the adbusting scolds worried about the phallic symbolism of Joe Camel, and not Toucan Sam? The guy’s got a beak six times the size of his torso; he’s the Dirk Diggler of the breakfast cereal set.
There’s a story: the Breakfast cereal mascots as characters in Boogie Nights. Sugar Bear would be the porno director. He always struck me as the sort of bear who got into the cereal business to meet young girls, anyway. Can’t get enough of those sugar smacks. I’ll bet.
This morning’s dream was also theatrical in nature; my wife and I were doing a play, a mediocre 20s-style murder / comedy / love story / musical. My wife was fine, but I was awful; I sang like Rex Harrison, made up lyrics, forgot my dialogue. When the curtain fell there was applause, but when the curtain rose for our bow we noted that the entire audience was already on its feet, heading towards the exit. The producer appeared, wearing a camelhair coat with a thick white scarf knotted at the neck and a beige fedora; he expressed great confidence in us, and the play, and wanted to take it to Broadway. By now I was in full Noel Coward mode, and delivered the most devastating riposte:
“ “
DADDEE!
mrgh -
DADDEE LOOK AT ME!
must - remember - riposte -
DADDEE LOOK AT MY DRESS!
- and I blinked awake to find Gnat climbing up the bed, dressed in this absurd little outfit with a matching hat. I BUEFUL! And indeed she was.
“We were acting in a Broadway play,” I said to my wife, brushing my teeth. “I stunk, but the producer had faith in us.”
“WHAT?”
Nevermind. I hope the producer fired us and hired Ashley Judd. She needs the work.
I have previously slung brickbats at the tiresome Michael Savage, a “shock jock” now hired to do an MSNBC show. From a news story (can't remember where I got it):
GLAAD claimed Savage spews "hateful, defamatory rhetoric" against virtually everyone except white men. He has referred to gays and lesbians as perverts, said Joan Garry, GLAAD's executive director.
While I don’t doubt the pervert accusation, the idea that Savage rants against everyone except white men is BS. There is one pure noble incorruptible soul in Savage’s world, and by some peculiar coincidence it happens to be Mike Savage. One of the recent promos for his show on a local radio station had Mr. S ripping Bush for inaction against terrorism, saying he was like Nero, fiddling while Rome burned. (Actually, he supposedly played a lyre.) The next day he’ll praise Bush. And then rip him the next. It doesn’t matter. What counts is the free and unhindered flow of bile towards anyone whose drone-like buzz does not synchronize with the noise of the bee that occupies his bonnet on that particular day. Boring? You’ve no idea.
And here’s a tip to GLAAD: some gays are also white and male.
The piece continued:
Savage threatened to launch his own campaign against people who fund groups like GLAAD, perhaps appealing to the U.S. Justice Department to see if his rights have been violated.
"You keep this up and I tell you, until the last breath I breathe, I'll cut your sources of funding off," he said. "You'll be serving muffins in cafes if you're lucky."
Savage's radio commentary "scared me," Garry said. "It felt very threatening."
Oh, grow up. Find a spine. Laugh it off. Who cares what a beady-eyed ranter on MSNBC says? No one watches. But maybe people would watch if the network paired Mike Savage with Dan Savage. If nothing else, it would be fun to watch Mike swab himself after every debate with moist towelettes to kill the homo cooties. I have my own issues with Dan Savage - I think that give-Gary-Bauer-the-flu piece of performance art was somewhere between drop-jaw dumb and reprehensible, but I’d love to see him carve Mike into quivering chunks every week.
How, or why, I shot off on this tangent I’ve no idea. Am dead. Must sleep. Have a lovely Thursday.
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