NewscomaGot A Two-Pack Habit And A Motel Tan

Diesel at Mattress Police makes me laugh. He needs a nemesis and he has found one.

A great nemesis can’t be an idiot; he has to be brilliant but twisted – someone who has the power to accomplish great things, but uses that power only for his own demented ends. Someone like Darth Vader or Hans Gruber from Die Hard. Or Thomas Kinkade.

Yes, you heard me right. I have selected as my nemesis Thomas Kinkade, the Painter of Light®.

If you’re not familiar with this “artist,” he’s best known as the man who has produced essentially the same painting 8,436 times over the past 20 years. Kinkade-land is a place filled with cottages almost militantly cozy, a place where it has always just rained, but it never rains. There is no sun in Kinkade-land – only an endless panorama of supernaturally illuminated clouds. It is a place where human beings, if they are seen at all, are represented only in the distance as Ice-Skating Boy or Man on Horse, never as individuals with names or identities. Judging from the freakish glow emanating from the cottages, the people in Kinkade’s paintings are probably too busy stoking their fireplaces and lighting the drapes on fire to be seen outdoors.

I’m not a Kinkade fan. To be honest, he makes me queasy and filled all full of self-doubt when I’m eating Ramen noodles. I think to myself “Self, why am I not in front of this fire eating eating a fine brisket and all cozied up while drinking a hot adult cider.”

I’m laughing because I agree. Sorry, if you like him, good for you. Not my cup of tea though. He sort of scares me but you have to give him kudos for drawing the same picture pretty much over and over again.

Although I don’t need a nemesis as I have one or two of those in my non-virtual world that makes my stomach hurt and want to eat gravel, I think for Diesel, this is a fine villain so read the rest of his new rivalry.

Photo from Mattress Police

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyLReBNDlnk]

With Snoop Dogg from last week in Amsterdam at the Melkweg. The video starts a few seconds in so bear with it.

Willie Nelson for ambassador to the world!

Also Happy Birthday to Big Daddy.

Have a great birthday, Dad. I love you. As this was Amsterdam, I thought you might like it.

This is a throwdown on Costas’ HBO show from last night about blogging, the sports world and changes in sports media.

It gets ugly. If you are offended by foul language, go look at this picture of a cat with laser beam eyes.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9fCfgTjlWU]

Bloggers Vs. Journalists, campers, and it got ugly.

Alan Sepinwall wrote this:

For this one, the panelists were Will Leitch, who runs Deadspin, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and sometime sports author H.G. “Buzz” Bissinger (”Friday Night Lights”), and poor Cleveland Browns wide receiver Braylon Edwards, who looked confused and terrified about how and why he got dragged into the middle of this.
Anyway, things didn’t get off to a good start with Costas mocking/joking that he found Leitch “far more palatable in person.” It went downhill from there, as not two minutes into the segment, Bissinger cut off Leitch and said, “I have to interject, because I feel really strongly about this. I think you’re full of s**t.”

Leitch responds here on the whole trainwreck.

Wowee.

Video from Awful Announcing

Go see what MSNBC’s Norah O’Donnell said to Elizabeth Edwards in this seven second clip .

But MSNBC’s Norah O’Donnell had other ideas. Don’t get me wrong: Edwards did get to briefly respond to McCain’s proposed policies. But to be afforded that privilege, Edwards first had to field two questions about Senator Barack Obama’s re-re-repudiation of Reverend Jeremiah Wright. And the ensuing health care conversation lasted all of two questions before O’Donnell commenced a five-question attempt to pin down the Edwards’ family endorsement, forcing Elizabeth Edwards to find newer and more creative ways to parry the question.

O’Donnell was inadvertently honest about it, telling Edwards, “This is a big deal, health care for many Americans. It’s not as sexy as Reverend Wright is now.”

There’s more if you are inclined at the link.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBCv2UAFLwM]

My first music bed with a video. Yeah, my new media skillz are mad, MAD I’m telling you.

As I’ve been very running around like a chicken with it’s head cut off for what seems like months and haven’t seen the news in the past couple of days, I didn’t really realize the extent of the Jeremiah Wright press conference and Barack Obama’s follow-up yesterday until this morning. I admit that I’ve been a bit tired of it all.

I really have no comment on Wright’s ministry as I don’t know anything about him other than he tends to get people fired up, but after reading some of the transcripts of his appearance at the National Press Club my first reaction was that this was press stunt from the word go on several levels. I don’t think you can break down his entire life as a minister into a 25 second sound bite. With that said, many ministers I know have an ego. They are human. Wright proved that on Monday with his blustering and posturing.

I seriously think that Obama was pissed. No one can say that he didn’t try to give his former pastor the benefit of the doubt. He stood beside him until Wright went too far. And he did. No one wins in this situation (except in the long term John McCain) because the pastor became a caricature of himself, but pundits don’t care about that and Wright is an adult.

I go back to ego.

But was this scandal part of a bigger plan to break Obama’s momentum and to prey upon a nation overstimulated and weary by this never ending political campaign for president?

I don’t know, I see a different picture about this latest Wright political scandal. First of all, I see chapters being taken from the Karl Rove Handbook where the bottom line is “Destroy” and ask questions later. The mainstream television news media swarms on these sort of tactics and political spin creators know this.

We’ve been through eight years of political distractions/secrecy/spin and this is no different than what we’ve seen before. Ask about the economy a couple of years ago and then the word terrorism was thrown out at a White House Presser. You get my drift.

I really have never been a fan of Hillary Clinton because I’ve always seen her as divisive leader. I’m not saying she’s not capable but I also know she is a politician where the bottom line is to win at any cost. I’m not naive, Obama is the same. People don’t run for the presidency for anything other than a victory.

But all of this political maneuvering basically means that it’s getting to a point that you might as well start practicing saying “President John McCain” because the Democrats have, as a friend of mine said yesterday, “Snatched defeat out of the jaws of victory.” Yeah, I meant to say it that way.

It’s always about the next press stunt, the next trick that diverts the American public from seeing the bigger issue. And inadvertently the American public lets them. We will see if Indiana and North Carolina’s primaries are impacted by this latest scandal du jour.

Wright’s 15 minutes of fame has turned into 30. Will it make a difference?

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, this is just politics as usual. This is the way the political game is played.

And, as someone who does pay attention, I’m weary of it all as well.

I realize I so stole this from Pop Candy but it’s really cool.

At Get A Monster by Mail, where for a small nominal fee an artist will draw you your own personal monster and for $10 bucks more, will event do a YouTube of the rendering.

More than cool and this is how it works:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iqhVMAyx3I]

Color me impressed.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHz_HvpOHO8]

Anything with Tura Satana in it is, well, divine.

You haven’t seen Faster Pussycat, Kill, Kill?

Varla rocks the house in that movie.

Well, you should. Be sure you hopped up on beer before you see either one of these fine features. It helps with the experience.

If you’re like me, you’ve probably wondered for years why 80’s familial super group DeBarge broke up.

Read the rest. Just go.

Ugh.

NEW YORK – Roger Clemens had a decade-long relationship with country star Mindy McCready that began when she was a 15-year-old aspiring singer and the pitcher was a Boston Red Sox ace, the Daily News reported.

“I cannot refute anything in the story,” McCready told the newspaper in a story posted on its Web site Monday night.

“I have known Roger Clemens for a long time,” she said, without detailing the nature of their relationship.

Clemens’ lawyer, Rusty Hardin, confirmed the pitcher and singer had known each other for a long time but told the newspaper there was no sex.

There is never any sex in sex scandals these days is there? (*snark*)

I don’t like Clemens by a mile and I don’t know Mindy McCready although I admit I remember when she was in jail and all.

But, yup, it’s dominating the news.

Don’t we have a war going on or something?

Yesterday was one of those long days that ended with me being at an event which is a little community festival that we have around here, and I know it’s hard to believe, celebrating the state flower.
As I meandered about with people I’ve known forever and listened to folks chat, I had a moment of being very pleased with my area.

Then it changed on a dime.

Politics were brought up in front of Scout and I, and with a sense of horror, we listened to some of the nastiest stuff about the election I’ve ever heard. All I can tell you is that I really needed a shower after listening to this one man’s monologue on why he wasn’t a racist while the entire time spewing some of the most horrific language I’ve ever seen that literally made my stomach hurt.

With that said, an older man with tattoos, long hair and Harley attire told this other guy to shut up in the probably one of the most clever ways I’ve seen in a long time.  The other man backed off.

This situation had two levels to it. First, the guy wouldn’t listen to us because basically we were women and because he could have cared less when we tried to get him to stop. Guy #1 was reveling in his diatribe, preening like a peacock, and anytime I tried to interrupt him, he shut me down. He had a soapbox, a podium if you will, that he had built up in his own mind. Even his body language was intrusive to both Scout and I but we weren’t buying into it. We were giving each other that look that you have with old friends where you know we were agreeing non-verbally to gather our things to walk away.

When it’s just one person talking incessantly and won’t even give you the opportunity to say “KNOCK IT OFF!” it’s sometimes best to remove yourself from the situation. You can’t win a fight or reason with a growling, snarling bear or people like this guy. There is no winning. There just isn’t. People like that want to leave a stain on other people’s souls. And many times they succeed.

After last night’s Guy #2 ran Guy #1 off, he talked about his time in Vietnam and that he’d spent some time in jail when he was younger. He said he’d made some mistakes but that he had tried to learn from them. He also talked about being part-Sioux and how when he was younger that people made fun of him calling him things that bled into his very own identity and now that he was older, how those words still stayed with him.

“It still burns,” he said after Scout left. “It’s been years but it still hurts, those words. Hatred, well, it bleeds.”

He talked about the meaning of what words meant and that they cut deep. And then he said later about being in the jungle fighting for his country and that a black man took a bullet for him.

“His skin color didn’t matter. He was covering my ass and I was covering his. It doesn’t matter what color you are and to be honest, I’m tired of all this crap. We are all just people. I don’t want to hear this stuff anymore. People don’t understand me either. I have long hair and a Harley. We are who we are. I’m too old and too tired, Newscoma,” he said. “I’m not for Barack Obama but it has nothing to do with his skin color. I just like Hillary better. I want the White House to be the Pink House (insert new stereotype here) but with that said, I just want this to be a better country. I don’t think I’m going to live to see that though.”

And I wondered, as I heard him cough deeply with a rattle that sounded terrible that I know meant he might have something possibly nasty living within his small, scarred, tattooed body when he had trouble catching his breath, if he would live long enough.

I didn’t think so.

I gathered my things and left and wondered if I would ever see him again. When I got home I sat in my chair with the television off, rubbing Mabel’s head as she slept noisily in my lap and stared for a long time at nothing, thinking about this planet that I live on.

I didn’t sleep for a long time.

In 1998, Bill Geerhart sent letters to Serial Killers, Politicians and Oprah Winfrey posing as a 10 year-old boy.

To his surprise, replies soon started pouring in. Everyone from Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld (on tree-fort diplomacy) to Oprah Winfrey, Mister Rogers, Janet Reno, and members of the Supreme Court had words of wisdom for Billy. (”I like the Egg McMuffin,” wrote Justice Clarence Thomas when asked about his favorite McDonald’s food. “Actually, I like almost everything there.”) Responding to Billy’s idea for a “Hustler for kids,” Larry Flynt wrote back encouraging the fourth grader to “Hang in there. You’ll be 18 before you know it.”

As it turns out, no group hates to disappoint a child more than convicted killers, all of whom responded promptly to Billy’s questions about dropping out of school. Their letters, published here for the first time, range from criminally insane to downright sensible, offering snapshots of the personalities behind some of America’s most hideous crimes.

A decade later, he followed up his initial request with new letters to Serial Killers such as the Unabomber, Charles Manson and Richard Rodriguez.

Radar Magazine has the collection printed for the first time and Whoa!

That’s the Charles Manson we know and watch with fear.

I think it goes without saying that Charles Manson is cuckoo but with that said, you need to read all the letters from the early ones to the most recent.

Amazing.