"I'll Have What She's Having."

Thanks to opinoinistas.com, I awoke to read this quote from Barack Obama in a 1996 interview in the New Yorker. When asked about his wife, Michelle, Obama replied:

“Michelle is a tremendously strong person, and has a very strong sense of herself and who she is and where she comes from. But I also think in her eyes you can see a trace of vulnerability that most people don’t know, because when she’s walking through the world she is this tall, beautiful, confident woman. There is a part of her that is vulnerable and young and sometimes frightened, and I think seeing both of those things is what attracted me to her. And then what sustains our relationship is I’m extremely happy with her, and part of it has to do with the fact that she is at once completely familiar to me, so that I can be myself and she knows me very well and I trust her completely, but at the same time she is also a complete mystery to me in some ways. And there are times when we are lying in bed and I look over and sort of have a start. Because I realize here is this other person who is separate and different and has different memories and backgrounds and thoughts and feelings. It’s that tension between familiarity and mystery that makes for something strong, because, even as you build a life of trust and comfort and mutual support, you retain some sense of surprise or wonder about the other person.”

Uh, yes. One of those, please, and... can you make it to-go?

~C~

Now We've Gone and Done It.

We freakin' broke Antarctica.



I'm pretty sure someone's going to get a big timeout over this.

~A~

Why Obama Has No Drama

He was raised in Hawaii, that's why.

Very little sense of drama here. Not that individual people don't have drama---humans tend to be able to create that wherever they are. But the place, the collection of relatively small islands in the middle of a vast and unforgiving ocean, built on layers and layers of volcanic effluent, is just designed for brooding. Stuff washes away here. The wind and water come in and move through and go out, and what remains is only the stuff that's tacked down. Drama is usually transient. It's a cherry bomb in the algebra class of life. There's no space for that kind of stuff here.

Here it's aloha, baby. This place is what helped teach our future president the equanimity he displays now. I think we're in for some different times than we've been experiencing for the last, oh, sixteen years (if you include the Clintons and their drama).

Well, glad to be here, and now, I have to get myself to the beach and take a walk.

Aloha.

~C~

Finally, President-Elect Barack Obama Puts Our Troubled Minds To Rest on The Nation's Most Pressing Issue.

It's been narrowed down to a Labradoodle or a Portuguese Water Dog.

(What? You thought I meant the economy? Oh, please. We're totally screwed there.)

~C~

Maybe Oedipus Had The Right Idea

One of the things that seeing the movie "W" did for me was to bring home the point that anybody, regardless of status, money, education or advantage, can have a fucked-up homelife and asshole parents. Particularly poignant in this scenario is the reiterated theme that, though Dubya (or "Junior" as his parents called him) was first-born son, it was clear that second-born Jeb was always Daddy's favorite.

At every turn, Oliver Stone's film has the younger George trying to get his parents' attention in both positive and negative ways. (Incidentally, and totally off-point, Josh Brolin is brilliant in this part, and deserves an Oscar nomination.) After crashing and burning in every nepotistic endeavor he attempts, George finally finds some success as owner of the Texas Rangers. In an alarming and painful scene, he proudly is ushering Daddy around the brand-new, just completed, state-of-the-art stadium, and is soon devastated by his father's pre-occupation with Jeb's doings and beings. Owning a major league ball club is clearly not prestigious enough for the Bush family.

The scenes where Bush seems most sympathetic are those where he's being addressed by his father, compared to and constantly falling short of Jeb's apparently sterling example. That's why I almost managed a spark of compassion when watching the elder Bush's interview with Chris Wallace, where he made out that his eldest son's presidential mistakes were so prolific he didn't want to enumerate them, telling Wallace to look it up on the Internet, and was easily coaxed into cooing about son Jeb's potential as a national politician, including as a senator or possibly (kill me now!) Bush President #3. (What do they think? Third time's the charm?)

If I had any fragment of empathy for GWB left (and I just might, because, hey, we've met his mother, haven't we), this would be the time it would be ignited. The guy actually took very little in the way of brains and talent and managed to get himself the job of President of the United States---and he's still in his younger brother's long, long shadow.

Jesus, those Bushes are one tough room.

~C~

Ann Coulter: Fashion Diva

Should a prematurely aging bleach blonde in her late forties, who hasn't had a decent haircut nor worn a skirt below crotch-level in nearly thirty years, really be allowed to discuss someone else's sense of fashion?

Oh, well, unlike Michelle Obama, people will never mistake Ann Coulter for Jackie O., or Cindy McCain, or Michelle Obama in either her fashion or her manners. All three of the aforementioned exhibited the ability to dress in tasteful styles that were both flattering and age-appropriate, and could conduct themselves with reasonable decorum in public. Coulter, on the other hand, still looks like a hooker at Mardi Gras. An OLD hooker at Mardi Gras at that.

Ann, go home, wash your face, learn how to use a good moisturizer (with sunscreen, for God's sake), some decent quality make-up (hint: pale lipstick on women over thirty is always a bad, bad call), get some skirts that hide those gnarly, hideous knees and cut that stringy mop you call hair. Then, maybe, after you stop looking like a crack whore whose been working the boulevard long past her prime, then you can start critiquing other people's style and appearance. Oh, and, about your book? Let me just tell you that there is nothing more pathetic than a "never-was" desperately trying not to become a "has-been."

Word.

~C~

So, Here's My Thinking on the Whole Jett Travolta Thing

If you weren't in the room when he died, if you weren't an intimate part of the caretaking process for the Travolta-Preston family, if you aren't a health care professional who wasn't actively consulting on his case.... why don't you just shut up already.

Since Jett Travolta died last week in what appears to be a fall in the bathroom while his family vacationed in the Bahamas, I've begun seeing all kinds of stories on how he died, including comments that the Travoltas were cavalier in some way about his care, the implication that somehow the caretaker at the house was somehow involved, and even (and this one, I have to admit, gets my vote for the "Boy, Have You Been Watching Too Much Television" Award) that this was some kind of Scientology-related takedown. I've also heard at least three different stories on Jett's developmental difficulties, ranging from autism to epilepsy to retardation. His parents have admitted in past interviews that Jett was somehow developmentally delayed, and that as a toddler, he was stricken with Kawasaki Syndrome. I have also heard from everybody I know that either knows or has worked with John Travolta and Kelly Preston that Jett's parents were dedicated, loving, caring parents who have always doted on both their children.

These people have lost a child. I can't even imagine the depth or magnitude of their grief and despair. How about we handle this celebrity-adjacent tragedy differently than we have in the past, by not speculating on how we could have prevented it all, if only we'd been there, with our superior parenting skills and our highly astute sense of potential danger. Go hug your children and check your own coffee tables for sharp, pokey edges, and leave these people alone. They loved their son, they did their best for him during his life, and---as sometimes happens even in the most loving, safe, and diligent homes---a tragic accident happened.

Shut up. Just shut up. Now.

~C~