SNL's Take On Palin

I resisted Bruce's call, for days, to see this video. Finally, I gave in....

Ha, ha, ha, ha!

Now, back to reality!

Just one month left! Then....

The 2012 campaign starts!

First Impressions Of Tonight's Debate

Left: Image from here: quote from here.

The Joker: You'll see, I'll show you, that when the chips are down, these uh... civilized people, they'll eat each other. You see, I'm not a monster. I'm just ahead of the curve.


I'm continually struck at how Barack Obama seems unable to focus on the Russia/Georgia situation, at least in comparison with McCain's intense, maniacal laser focus. Obama's non-answer meandered everywhere, when he should have been offering a stark contrast with McCain's drive towards war with Russia.

Does Obama basically agree with McCain? Or has Obama's understanding of the Georgian situation been rattled by events? Or does Obama even really care? It's certainly a mystery to me. It should be easy enough to say Georgia has no business asking for admission to NATO, but Obama won't say that! Instead, he seems to passively agree with McCain!

Boy, McCain really loathes 'The One'! The lust for power sure brings out the disdain, doesn't it?

This thing about how Obama would supposedly meet every tinpot dictator in the world without preconditions has sure become a bugbear with the right. As an indictment, it's almost meaningless - either you meet, or you don't, and the prestige of the U.S. isn't so large that it should become an obstacle. Yet the right thinks they are onto something. I call it John-Bolton-itis.

Look, if Chamberlain had refused to meet with Hitler in 1938 over the Sudetenland Crisis nothing would have been any different than it was! This isn't the Twilight Zone! The importance of the will and pride displayed in summitry is generally overplayed in the pageant of international politics.

Why does McCain want the government to bail out everyone with a bad mortgage? There are lots and lots of bad mortgages out there, likely too many for the government to successfully bail out. Like others, I pay my mortgage on time - if others can't, they need options to surrender their mortgages, and move on. Don't come begging to me for help! Like Admiral Ackbar says, "It's a trap!"

Health care "is a right!" Now that, my friends, resonated with the American electorate!

Silence Of The Grave On Lone Star Road

Left: Cher Vang grips her face in grief Monday at the crash site where her mother, Khou Vang, was killed when a bus overturned. Cher Vang's father was thrown clear and injured in the crash and said he lost track of his wife. Family members combed nearby fields and checked hospitals before authorities confirmed Khou Vang's death.
Bryan Patrick / bpatrick@sacbee.com



The rural casinos of California are heavily-dependent on the bus traffic that brings mostly Asian immigrants to the tables and slot machines. This accident is a real blow to that traffic.

Many condolences to the families of the injured and dead:

It was a recipe for disaster.

A 52-year-old man with a sketchy driving record piloting a bus for the very first time, possibly under the influence of drugs or alcohol.

A cargo of 41 passengers in a bus with no seat belts.

A shortcut down a narrow two-lane road that would have saved two miles of driving.

All of these things came together at 6:10 p.m. Sunday outside the Colusa County city of Williams, when Quintin J. Watts apparently fell asleep at the wheel, rolled the casino-bound bus he was driving and crashed, killing eight people and injuring 35.

Among the dead was the bus company's owner, 68-year-old Daniel Cobb, Watts' stepfather and the man who hired him last week as a favor.

Among the injured was Watts, a down-on-his-luck former truck driver and parolee who was upgraded from critical to fair condition Monday at Woodland Memorial Hospital and under arrest on a charge of driving under the influence.

Survivors of the crash told harrowing stories Monday of seeing Watts fall asleep as the bus swerved back and forth, and of Cobb making a futile effort to stop the crash.

"The driver was falling asleep, and he was trying to wake the driver up," said Liw Saechao, Cobb's business partner and the mother of his 8-year-old daughter. "Daniel grabbed the wheel and tried to put the bus brake on, and it was too late – it was already flipping.

"They said Daniel flew out of the bus and into the ditch."

Many of the passengers on the bus were regular patrons of Cobb's bus service, and several called Saechao after the crash to recount the last moments before the bus rolled over.

Saechao's son, Khae, said of Watts: "This was his first actual bus trip."

"Fiddler On The Roof" - More Final Weekend Photos

Left: Perchik (Giorgio Selvaggio) and Hodel (Josephine Longo).

Below: Tevye (Jeff Nauer) and Hodel (Josephine Longo).



Left: The Fiddler (Lindsay Carpenter).

Left: "Chavala". Chava (Shannon Kendall) and Tevye (Jeff Nauer).

Below: "Matchmaker, Matchmaker". Tzeitel (Amanda Yount) and Hodel (Josephine Longo).



Left: "If I Were A Rich Man". Tevye (Jeff Nauer).

Below: Tzeitel (Amanda Yount) and Motel The Tailor (Brennan Ballard).



Left: Tzeitel (Amanda Yount) and Motel The Tailor (Brennan Ballard).

Below: Perchik (Giorgio Selvaggio), Hodel (Josephine Longo), and Tevye (Jeff Nauer).



Left: Perchik (Giorgio Selvaggio) and Hodel (Josephine Longo).

Left: Perchik (Giorgio Selvaggio) and Hodel (Josephine Longo).

Below: Hodel (Josephine Longo) and Tevye (Jeff Nauer).



Left: Schprintze (Ana Hansen), Bielke (Lauren Mills), Golde (Jan Isaacson), zeitel (Amanda Yount), Motel The Tailor (Brennan Ballard), and Fyedka (Trevor Hoffman).

Below: Chava (Shannon Kendall).




Left: "Matchmaker, Matchmaker". Chava (Shannon Kendall), Hodel (Josephine Longo), and Tzeitel (Amanda Yount).

Below: Tzeitel (Amanda Yount) and Motel The Tailor (Brennan Ballard).



Left: Hodel (Josephine Longo), Tevye (Jeff Nauer), and Perchik (Giorgio Selvaggio),

Below: Chava (Shannon Kendall).


Left: Perchik (Giorgio Selvaggio) and Hodel (Josephine Longo).

Don't Mess With The SUB!



In Albuquerque, John McCain used an appearance in the ballroom at the University of New Mexico's Student Union Building to slander Barack Obama.

The Student Union Building, aka the "SUB", is a very familiar place. As Vice-President of UNM's Ballroom Dance Club, I spent many happy days in the late 70's quarreling with the authorities over scheduling that same ballroom for our dances. Sometimes it seemed to me that the SUB authorities saw us more as parasites than as the precious vessels for America's future that we unarguably were.

Well, I have news for John McCain, and his slander campaign at the SUB. I tried slander too, but it didn't work. We still had to vacate the ballroom promptly at 10:00 p.m., no matter what.

The odds of slander working now, for McCain, are similarly nil. If McCain doesn't have a positive program to bring to America's voters, the SUB authorities are going to bite his ass off.

The Ultimate In Bad-Taste Titles For Musicals

The Beaconsfield gold mine collapse galvanized Australia two years ago, particularly regarding the policy of "self-regulation" applied by Tasmanian authorities to the mine:

A massive rock fall on April 25 [2006] trapped miners Todd Russell and Brant Webb underground for two weeks and resulted in the death of their co-worker, Larry Knight.

This new musical continues to galvanize Australians:

A PLAYWRIGHT who has sent up events surrounding the Beaconsfield mine tragedy has changed the play's name following outrage from the family and friends of the man killed in the disaster.

Dan Ilic originally named his play, to debut at the Melbourne Fringe Festival tomorrow night, Beaconsfield: A Musical in A-Flat Minor, but today changed it to Beaconsfield: The Musical.

Particle Physics' Holy Grail



Image by Wurzel at B3ta.

Journey's End

Dyer returns from Alaska.

Here Comes An Asteroid!

Heading for Sudan!:

The impact location has been narrowed down to 21N, 33E, at 2:46 UT, which is in in northern Sudan. The probability for impact is between 99.8% and 100%.

The asteroid will track from the northwest, so observers in Europe, northern Africa could possibly see the atmospheric entry phase.

Depending on the composition the atmospheric impact and breakup should release ~ 1 kiloton of energy.

Canadian Conservatives Beginning To Get Violent

No quarter for liberals:

Toronto police patrolled a midtown area overnight, after vandals cut brake lines on at least 10 cars parked at homes with Liberal election signs on their lawns.

"There are two child seats in the back of my car," said Andrew Lane, chief financial officer for Bennett's campaign. "To cut the brake line on a car like that is just evil. Awful."

Added Lane, whose children are 6 months and 22 months: "You have to crawl under someone's car and cut the brake line, knowing that it could kill someone, or their whole family."

..."I'm just sick to my stomach about this," a shaken Bennett told the Toronto Star last night. She spent the day visiting the vandals' victims. "It is so upsetting. I've spent my life encouraging people to get involved in the democratic process and now it would appear they are targeted for doing so."

..."This isn't about party politics. Putting people's lives at risk is a whole different thing," said Johnston. "We're not taking the sign down. We won't be intimidated. But I am really disappointed this is happening in Canada. It's beyond comprehension."

A Suggestion From The Vine Bar

In Hollywood. I like this idea:

The diligently redonkulous folks from Party Scammers are back with another Gunna Make You Sweat night, encouraging you to wear Spandex garments, indulge in adult libations and do aerobics under the tutelage of comedy dork Ryan Flynn, who poses as a sibling of fitness guru Richard Simmons. Prepare for hot jams by Icy Lytes and Bianca O'Blivion, and take advantage of going out in that thong leotard you’ve been meaning to debut.

Smooth As Silk

Left: A gigantic mechanical spider sits on the side of the Concourse tower in Liverpool city centre, north west England. The spider which was commissioned for the city`s European Capital of Culture celebrations will explore the city over the next few days. The show is the work of the French company La Machine, the spider weighs 37 tonnes and is 50 feet high, moves at 2 miles per hour and took one year to build.


Arachnophobics Anonymous better not meet in Liverpool!:

Liverpool woke this morning to an unusual sight - a giant mechanical spider dangling down a high rise office building, the latest and strangest happening in the city's European Capital of Culture.

The three storey arachnid on the side of Concourse House was created by a French arts collective called La Machine, and promises to be the centrepiece of an enormous piece of street theatre.

...La Machine , led by artistic director Francois Delaroziere, has an impressive record. It was responsible for The Sultan's Elephant, a spectacular five-day programme in central London that began on May 4 2006 with a four metre wood and steel rocket crashlanding in Waterloo Place, embedding itself several feet into the road surface.

This was merely the start - it was followed by a mechanical elephant 12 metres high that roamed the city streets, the largest actor in a fairy tale drama based around the elephant's relationship with a small girl who had appeared to a Sultan in a dream.

La Machine's Liverpool show is alleged to be a lot edgier and less whimsical than The Sultan's Elephant, but no less jaw-dropping. The spectacle has been 18 months in the planning and surrounded by absolute secrecy, even though the show's protagonists have been rehearsing in the city for a month.

Helen Marriage, the co-director of British-based creative outfit Artichoke productions, which has been overseeing the project, said that the logistics had been formidable.

"In a theatre you'd use the set to rehearse, but we can't - we have to practise off-site and in secret," she said in a newspaper interview. "The first time we'll get on set is in front of the whole city; hence the 18-month planning period. You really can't over plan something this big.

"We've measured every road, removed street lights and even dug up a roundabout. Now we just have to hope it's all been accurate, otherwise, well, it could all turn into a bit of an excitement.'

Jim Cramer's Five-Year Plan


Not quite as optimistic as before:

“Whatever money you may need for the next five years, please take it out of the stock market right now, this week. I do not believe that you should risk those assets in the stock market right now.”

Spotting A Trend

The geisha tradition has much to recommend it, and it would be nice to see it revive:

The dying art of the geisha received a surprising boost last week with figures showing that the number of apprentices has reached 100 for the first time in half a century. More than 30 modern, educated girls are entering this exacting profession every year.

There are at present only about 200 genuine geishas working in the old city of Kyoto, down from several thousand in the period before the second world war depicted in the bestselling novel Memoirs of a Geisha. They can command astronomical fees for entertaining male customers with refined performances of music and dance, playing absurd parlour games and diverting men with conversation as they serve exquisite food.

The Florida Jewish Vote Minefield

I find this quite baffling: Sarah Palin's creationist/fundamentalist crowd these days is philosemitic (often mindlessly so), not antisemitic. But whatever! (I especially like the quote: "All the votes here count, even if we don't count all the votes.")

"I was leaning towards McCain," growled Marvin Weinstein, 74, as he strode to an appointment in a doctor's office. "But I think his choice of her has turned me off."

"What I hear is she's an awful anti-Semite," George Friedberg said as he sat curbside in his Escalade. "She won't be getting my vote." Friedberg's wife, Florence, appeared at the passenger-side door, shopping bags in hand. "I was leaning towards McCain, but after he selected her I've ruled him out completely. I find her offensive."

...Only about 5 percent of Florida's voters are Jewish, according to exit polls from the 2004 election. But this is a swing state with 27 electoral votes and elections here are often decided by slim margins. "You never, ever take a vote for granted in Florida," notes Democratic pollster Thomas Eldon, of Schroth & Eldon Associates. "All the votes here count, even if we don't count all the votes." George Bush owed his victory in Florida in 2000, and the presidency, in large part to the difficulty that the elderly Jewish voters of Palm Beach County had with a butterfly ballot.

In 2000, one of Democratic presidential nominee Al Gore's prime electoral-vote targets was Florida, and his running mate was an Orthodox Jew. Would-be veep Joe Lieberman made repeated trips throughout the campaign to South Florida to deliver the base. It worked: George Bush received only 12 percent of Florida's Jewish vote. Four years later, Bush improved his total, taking 20 percent, and winning the state by 5 points.

In 2008, Joe Lieberman is back, but this time to make his case for the Republican candidate. Lieberman, now an independent, was reportedly McCain's personal choice for vice president, before party pressure forced him to look elsewhere. Lieberman cut a swath through South Florida this summer on behalf of McCain, an old friend and fellow Iraq hawk. Lieberman toured a synagogue, a cafe and a Jewish community center, in Broward and Miami-Dade counties in late July, then returned in early August, a trip notable because his campaign bus hit another vehicle. He is scheduled to return to Boca Raton Monday to conduct a town hall at the local Chabad center.

This year the Republicans thought they had an opening to exploit, a poor fit between the Democrats of South Florida and their party's presidential nominee. Much of the party leadership had been aligned with Hillary Clinton; Clinton also beat Obama by 17 points in the state's controversial Jan. 29 Democratic primary. Then there was Obama's race, his middle name, rumors about his religion, and doubts about his support for Israel.

...Others focused on Obama's supposed ties to Islam. "I think it has affected some people, unfortunately," says Marcy Selko, a committed Democrat and 69-year-old retired librarian who lives in Palm Beach County. "I've heard some people say, 'How could we have a president whose name is Hussein?' They said this even though they were Democrats!"

...In this environment, the Obama campaign made its bid for the Jewish voters of South Florida by selecting one of the region's most prominent Jewish Democrats, Rep. Robert Wexler, to co-chair the state campaign. (Rep. Kathy Castor from Tampa is the other chair.) Six-term incumbent Wexler's seat in Florida's 19th Congressional District, centered in Palm Beach County, is so safe that he has run unopposed three times. An Orthodox Jew and self-described "Fire Breathing Liberal," Wexler counterintuitively endorsed Obama right out of the gate, against the grain of the state Democratic leadership.

Wexler thinks the GOP has underestimated South Florida's Jews. "There's this misnomer among some in the press that the Jewish community is a one-issue community. It isn't," he says one summer afternoon following a talk at a Democratic Club in West Palm Beach. When his constituents learn "that John McCain supports privatizing Social Security" and "wants to appoint justices who will overturn Roe v. Wade," he says, "I assure you they will have nothing to do with John McCain." But Wexler also says his support for Obama is based on the fact that he's such a strong supporter of Israel, and because Obama recognizes that Iran is the greatest threat to Israeli and American security.

And that was all before Palin hit the stage. Her selection was a calculated risk by the Republicans, who badly needed to shore up support among the Christian right in battleground states like Florida. But it carried a special risk in Florida, one of the swing states with a significant Jewish population. "Kissing the Jewish vote goodbye," headlined England's Guardian newspaper after McCain announced his running mate. "Small Town Palin Big Problem for Jews," New York Jewish Week warned.

Wexler, known for his bombast, immediately declared the Alaska governor "a direct affront to the Jewish community."

"She was obviously selected to galvanize the conservative base, and she's done that," Gelber notes. "But for people with other issues, well, elderly Jewish voters are really not comfortable with that level of religious conservatism. They're generally pro-choice, don't believe creationism should be taught in schools, and they support stem cell research."

...Now it's the Democrats who see an opportunity in South Florida. The Jewish Council for Education and Research, which endorsed Obama, is trying to capitalize on McCain's stalled momentum by sponsoring "the Great Schlep," which "focuses on encouraging young Jews to visit their grandparents in Florida during the Columbus Day Weekend" and convince them to vote for Obama. As an added incentive to Bubbe and Zayde, the JCER provides pledges for the grandkids to sign promising to call more often during an Obama administration.

That, My Friends, Is A Joke We Can Believe In

Too far from God and too close to the District of Columbia:

Republican presidential candidate John McCain's brother made an apparent joke at a campaign rally this weekend that might not play well in parts of newly competitive Virginia.

Joe McCain, speaking at an event in support of his brother, called two Democratic-leaning areas in Northern Virginia "communist country," according to a report on The Washington Post's Web site.

"Matchmaker, Matchmaker"

As sung by Tevye's eldest daughters (and lip-synched by the three suitors) during warm-ups, just prior to Sunday's final show.

Left: Perchik (Giorgio Selvaggio), Motel the Tailor (Brennan Ballard), and Fyedka (Trevor Hoffman).

Left: Fyedka (Trevor Hoffman) and Motel the Tailor (Brennan Ballard).

Left: Perchik (Giorgio Selvaggio), Motel the Tailor (Brennan Ballard), and Fyedka (Trevor Hoffman).

Below: Perchik (Giorgio Selvaggio).

Ominous Sounds, Ominous Sights

11:00 p.m., in Woodland. In the distance, the sound of a helicopter. Was it associated with the big bus crash in Colusa County? Yes it was! Indeed, this very helicopter was featured in this video.

Passing by Woodland Memorial Hospital at 11:30 p.m., on the dark lawn at Cottonwood and Gibson, the dark silhouette of a helicopter.

RADIOHEAD 2008 Houston - Everything in its Right Place



I was listening to Paul Oakenfold's 'Greatest Hits' CD, and his remix of this song by Radiohead has got to be a Trance masterpiece!

"Everything In Its Right Place"

Kid A, Kid A, Kid A, Kid A
Everything, everything, everything, everything..
In its right place
In its right place
In its right place
Right place

Yesterday I woke up sucking a lemon
Yesterday I woke up sucking a lemon
Yesterday I woke up sucking a lemon
Yesterday I woke up sucking a lemon

Everything, everything, everything..
In its right place
In its right place
Right place

There are two colours in my head
There are two colours in my head
What is that you tried to say?
What was that you tried to say?
Tried to say.. tried to say..
Tried to say.. tried to say..

Everything in its right place

"Fiddler On The Roof" - Fourth Weekend (draft)

Left: Golde (Jan Isaacson) and Chava (Shannon Kendall).

Below: Perchik (Giorgio Selvaggio) and Hodel (Josephine Longo).


Left: Tzeitel (Amanda Yount) and Motel The Tailor (Brennan Ballard).

Left: Tevye (Jeff Nauer).

Left: "Sabbath Prayer" - Perchik (Giorgio Selvaggio), Motel the Tailor (Brennan Ballard), Golde (Jan Isaacson), Tzeitel (Amanda Yount), Chava and Hodel (Shannon Kendall and Josephine Longo, both obscured), Bielke (Lauren Mills), and Schprintze (Ana Hansen).