The Forkes Report

Too Little Too Late

nospam@example.com (Tim Forkes) — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 07:56:18 -0700

Now the president is talking tough. After he and his party have given away the single-payer option, after they’ve given away the public option and mandated everyone without health insurance has to buy health insurance from the very companies who make our health care system a joke.

It’s about time Mr. President, although the question is, is this too little too late? The bill will pass and get signed by the president, by way of reconciliation — the Nuclear Option. Isn’t that a quaint term! The Republicans want to frighten us with a scary word: “nuclear.”

Never mind that Republicans used “The Nuclear Option” five times during the Bush (43) years to pass budgets that spent beyond the limits of our treasury without paying for those budget shortfalls. This is the hypocrisy: when the Republicans blast the Democrats for using reconciliation they say the procedure has never been used on a bill, like the health care bill, that would have such a large impact on the American public.

Running the country into a three trillion dollar debt doesn’t have a great impact on the American taxpayers? That stretches credulity — no, that breaks it in two.

Not to mention, reconciliation has been used, with party line votes, for creating Social Security, the Voting Rights Act, and a host of other bills throughout history.

Does the health care bill really matter if we don’t have single payer or a public option? Is it good for the American people if we are forced to buy insurance we cannot afford? Will the bill actually reduce the financial burden we now carry due to health care costs if we are, in effect, subsidizing the health care industry?

Good Democrats tell us this is just a start, something we can build on in the future. Maybe it is, but while we wait to build on it people will still go without needed care and treatment and some of those people will die.

Too little too late.
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Just had this little shock. Years ago I moved to Sandy Eggo and one reason was the lovely hobby of snorkeling, at La Jolla Cove in particular. Now, La Jolla Shores is a nice place to snorkel too and like La Jolla Cove, many scuba divers start their dives from La Jolla Shores, over by the boat ramp where people launch anything that will float. People learning to ocean kayak learn right there.

This is already getting a little far a field, but what the Hell, we’re talking about La Jolla Shores and La Jolla Cove! I was just picturing the last time I was at the Shores, watching people trying to learn how to kayak — in the ocean. It’s probably a good bet most have never been in a canoe before, let alone an ocean kayak. You can tell: they look at the double-sided paddle — quizzically, eye the spot in the kayak where the passenger (or passengers) sit convinced they have that part figured out …

And then they look at the 2-4 foot breakers the surfers are cruising on up the beach and you see that, sometimes brief, look of fear. Two-to-four foot waves don’t sound so big — until you’re sitting in a kayak that gets lifted and bounced by one. Or worse yet, capsized. Anyway, it’s all part of the entertainment at La Jolla Shores.

The other entertainment is the eye candy. La Jolla Shores is a great place to watch people.

So, often I’ll go snorkeling at La Jolla Shores or La Jolla Cove. It’s a great activity, gets you into that beautiful Pacific Ocean and you can really commune with nature. I use that term, “snorkeling,” quite a bit. Never really noticed anyone snickering because when I talk about snorkeling, it’s about donning a mask, snorkel and fins and going out into the ocean. I don’t surf.

The past few nights the news has been full of recently resigned New York Congressman Eric Massa. He was recently accused of sexually assaulting one of his staffers, a man no less.
 Massa is a Democrat by the bye, and is married with children.

When the news first broke, that the House ethics committee was investigating the accusations, Massa claimed he was being pressured by the White House because he, Massa, voted against the House health care bill. As the news began to build, the congressman eventually resigned and went on Larry King and Glenn Beck, the latter hoping to get some great revelations about “corruption” in the Democratic Party and the White House. Beck later apologized to his viewers for wasting their time.

The TV interviews took place after Massa resigned and he talked about Rahm Emanuel accosting him in the Congressional gym shower — nekkid! How titillating! Emanuel, if you don’t know, is President Obama’s chief of staff. According to Massa, Emanuel was poking him in the chest for not voting for the health care bill.

Well, once all this news broke, Massa’s past came back to haunt him. The former congressman is a graduate of the Naval Academy and served about various ships of the line. Many of his former shipmates have now come out and told of Massa groping and touching them inappropriately.

One claim really caught my attention. A former shipmate of Massa, Stuart Borsch, said he had been the recipient of Massa’s unwanted advances and that one their fellow officers, who shared a stateroom with Massa, was woken up when Massa climbed up onto the upper bunk and tried to “snorkel” him.

Wait a minute! “Snorkel?” That just ain’t right! And what the Hell is snorkeling? Well, we all know what teabagging is: a guy drops is ballsack onto/into another person’s open mouth, usually when the other person is sleeping. “Snorkeling” is similar, except that the person baring his ballsack puts it over the sleeping person’s eyes, like a mask.

That just ain’t right.

First of all, now I gotta ask my Navy friends how often the “snorkeled” their shipmates. That should start a fight or two. But, now I’m going to have to explain myself whenever I tell someone I’m going snorkeling. DAMMIT!

Okay, just for the record, when I say I’m going snorkeling, that means I’m putting on a mask, snorkel and fins and going into the ocean. My ballsack, well it usually shrivels in the cold water, but it won’t be placed on any sleeping person’s eyes — or in their mouths for that matter. Unless that other person is a woman who is awake and expecting it. Certain things just feel too good.

Maybe I’ll go snorkeling this weekend, if the weather is nice.

Man Mountain Mike and the Avatar Experience

nospam@example.com (Tim Forkes) — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 12:01:00 -0700

Last night my friend John and I saw Avatar in 3-D IMAX. We went to the 10:35 show, assured that it would not only be not sold out (yeah I know, double negative — get over it), it wouldn’t be very crowded at all. Well, it wasn’t sold out, but it was crowded.

First of all, it wasn’t in the BIG IMAX theater at the Edwards Mira Mesa multi-plex. I forget how many theaters that have in that place, somewhere in the neighborhood of a 122 or something. No matter. The IMAX theater with the BIG IMAX screen was reserved for Alice in Wonderland starring Johnny Depp, among others.
 Haven’t seen that one yet but obviously the makers of it took some liberties with the story, if the Madhatter has a big role.

But the 3-D experience was definitely a step up. We were issued polarized glasses instead of those horrible red and blue jobbies we used to get when we were younger. The 3-D effect wasn’t as pronounced as I was expecting, but it was still there. In fact, I flinched once.

The floating, glowing white jellyfish-looking seed things were really cool in 3-D — but it was obviously all CGI animation, a very advanced state of CGI to be sure, but there were points in the film the animation was very evident.

Here’s one thing I found odd, if not downright insulting to my intelligence: the indigenous inhabitants of the fictional planet Pandora were not just blue, ten feet tall and had tails, they were all doe-eyed creatures, like in those sappy paintings of children begging in the streets. We feel sympathy for doe-eyed characters. Writer/director James Cameron held back no tricks to make this movie sappy.

But, the technology used to make this film made the price of the 3-D ticket worth it. Thanks to James Cameron we have an entirely new way to make and view motion pictures. I remember when, years ago, the first all-digital films were first shown in theaters. No celluloid film reels, just a digital projector.

If I’m not mistaken, the first all digital film I ever saw in a theater was Windtalkers, the story of the Navaho radiomen in the Marines who confounded the Japanese with their language when transmitting radio signals around the Pacific theater during World War II.
 Nicholas Cage dies at the end of that one, protecting his Navaho radioman.

Today, virtually every film made is done digitally. They have to be, just to accommodate the special effects. Avatar will most likely have that same effect on the film industry. Anyone who makes a film on celluloid is a sap. I mean, it’s costlier in so many ways, not the least of which is distribution. You can put an entire film on a DVD and ship it for a tenth the cost of shipping 2-3 reels of celluloid.

Purists of course will cite all those same nonsensical arguments they used when CD’s replaced vinyl records back in the late 1980’s. Yeah, I listened to both for comparison and the only difference was, on the CD we didn’t get the crackle and pop of dust and scratches that we did on vinyl records. “Warmth” my ass! Digital sound is better — cleaner.

What’s funny is that now CD technology is nearly obsolete. I’m listening to Jimi Hendrix as I type, generated through my Trusty Mac through a well-used iPod Classic. Any new music I want: just download it through iTunes. Haven’t bought a CD in years. In fact, the market for CD’s has fallen so drastically the CD Trader store in Poway closed its doors a couple years ago.

Same with motion pictures. That industry has moved into and past digital technology and Avatar is leading the movement. It’s slew of Academy Award nominations are primarily for the technical aspects of filmmaking, although it is nominated for Best Director (James Cameron) and Best Picture.

Really? Best picture? It isn’t that good of a story. As my friend Dan put it, Avatar is a science fiction version of Dances With Wolves. Except in this one the indigenous people win. The American Indians lost the Indian Wars … sort of. They started winning when they began opening casinos across America. Good for them! I love Barona and Mountain View casinos. And, as I recall, the original Dances With Wolves already won the Oscar for Best Picture.

The real pain-in-the-ass of watching Avatar in 3-D and the small IMAX theater had nothing to do with the film itself. Going to a movie theater to see a movie — any movie — is an experience. Whether you enjoy a movie or not depends on the environment and those people around you.

That bit of reality was most evident Saturday Night when John and I sat down in the somewhat crowded — small — IMAX theater to watch Avatar in 3-D. Well, John wasn’t too affected and wasn’t aware of the situation until after the movie was over. He was too engrossed in the 3-D digital wonder taking place on the screen.

You see, about two minutes into the movie itself, not the trailer for the Viking-dragon cartoon coming out later this year, but two minutes into the film, two guys came into the theater — late.

John and I got in there with 20 minutes to spare, found some seats and took two, leaving the two next to the aisle (on my left) open. When the movie started I was glad no one was sitting there; being able to spread out during a two and a half hour movie sounded appealing.

But it was not to be.

In come to the two late arrivals and, wouldn’t you know it, they decide to sit in our row! And one of these two film crashers was the size of an overweight offensive lineman. First he had to stand in front of me as he and his friend tried to decide where to sit. Mind you, the movie was rolling.

“What the fuck,” I said under my breath!

After a few seconds Man Mountain Mike and his sidekick decided to sit in those two empty seats on my left, next to the aisle. O Dear.

So Man Mountain Mike sits down, squeezing into a seat that is clearly too small for his fat ass. And then he “spreads out,” his right elbow bopping me in the shoulder and head, his right leg pushing my leg (and body) to the right. As the film rolled on, the more Man Mountain Mike spread out and had me pushed up against my friend John who was beginning to think I was getting a bit too friendly. All these years he’s known me I’ve been heterosexual, but you never know …

Then there was the smell. Sheesh! Ever smell someone who hasn’t showered in a week or two? It was two and a half hours of occasional torture. I stopped eating popcorn, which might have been a good thing anyway.

Years ago I learned it was time to start being loving and tolerant of others and everytime I got the urge to say something to Man Mountain Mike or, worse yet, jab him one good with my elbow, the thought ran through my mind, “Love and tolerance of others is our code.”
DAMMIT!

Eh, he was so big he probably could have squashed me with little or no effort anyway, but I demonstrated restraint of tongue and elbow.

Sunday Morning John and I were talking about it with friends. Everyone commiserated and our buddy Ray thought I would have enjoyed the movie if Man Mountain Mike hadn’t been sitting next to me. Possibly. I enjoyed Terminator when it first came out even though I knew it wasn’t destined for any great Oscar glory. I even liked Titanic, although I saw that one with a young damsel I was hot for at the time. That always makes the movie a better experience!

So, after chattering away about the whole Avatar in 3-D IMAX experience, with Man Mountain Mike, John innocently asked, “Why didn’t you say something? We could have moved down a seat!”

You mean, miss that whole experience, that two and a half hours of something to complain about for the next week? No way! What the Hell would I write about today if Man Mountain Mike hadn’t sat down next to me? Another movie review?

All beings are subject to suffering, it’s part of the true nature of things, according to the Buddha and what’s the use of suffering if you can’t whine about it later? Move a seat down! Sheesh John! My experience with Avatar in 3-D IMAX wouldn’t be complete without it.

Don’t know what I’m gonna bitch about now though …
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My friend Claudia, a Hooters Girl at the Oceanside, CA restaurant is vying for a shot at being in the 2011 Hooters Girl Calendar. She’s in the 2010 calendar (April) and actually went to the regional finals in the Hooters Girl contest, held in Long Beach, CA. Help her out and tell the people putting together the calendar to feature Claudia in their 2011 version! Click Here! She’s such a sweetheart!

Sliced Bread On Ice

nospam@example.com (Tim Forkes) — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 12:01:00 -0700

Over the weekend my buddy John and I were watching the Olympics: all that snow, all that drama, the women figure skaters — and Johnny Weir — Lindsey Vonn, Stephen Colbert, ah, it was great!

And the closing ceremony, with Captain Kirk and Catherine O'Hara, among the big name Canadian stars entertaining everyone. You could tell O’Hara wasn’t reading her own lines, it was mostly not funny. Well, you don’t want to upset anyone, don’t want offend any nations, certainly not the big bad wolf to the south.

The Olympics were good TV. Watching Shaun White win his gold in the Snowboarding Half Pipe was awesome! Really! Now that was entertaining! Watching the Men’s U.S. Hockey Team, an after thought to most analysts before the games started, watching them beat the Canadians—now that was awesome! And I got to watch in Hi Def with a Canadian in the room! She kept saying, “On paper the Canadian team is the better team.”

That was rich! We bandied that about for hours, days even, telling our Canadian friend her team must have lost the paper, or worse, used it for toilet paper.

Eh … yeah … we had fun for a week … sigh …

Because, on Sunday, the Men’s Canadian Hockey Team found the paper and beat the U.S. Hockey Team in the Gold Medal Game … yeah, well … okay Marilyn; the (sheesh) Men’s Canadian Hockey Team … (dammit!) is the better team … on paper and (fuck!) on the ice.

And, for that matter, so is the Women’s Canadian Hockey Team. But the U.S. got more medals then Canada overall! HA! Take that, Marilyn! Neener, neener, neeeener!

This is serious stuff here, international sporting rivalries! Yessirree! We don’t act like ten year olds for nuthin’! Well, not all the time. We’re guys and for whatever reason, our maturity meter gets stuck on “ten year old” often. Some guys might be thinking, “Speak for yourself.” Naah, I’m speaking for all of us.

So, while watching the Olympics, and then House and 24 on Monday, we kept getting bombarded with political commercials for the upcoming Republican Primaries, in which Republican Steve Poizner was being viciously attacked by one of his opponents. This was vicious too; one ad claimed he was a close ally of Nancy Pelosi! NO!

YES! Poizner is really a Democrat in elephant clothing! Or so Meg Whitman says.

“Where have I heard that name before,” you might be asking yourself? Meg is the billionaire former CEO of eBay! She is and has been clearly ahead in the polls and for the most part, had genteel and calm ads promoting herself to be the Republican nominee for California governor.

But then, out of nowhere, she started a series of attack ads on a candidate most Californians have never heard of — until she (and her campaign) brought him to our attention. Thanks Meg Whitman! Your ads did such a fine job John and I may, for the first time in our lives, vote in a Republican primary! For Steve Poizner!

Then of course, Whitman wants Republican voters to forget she gave large campaign donations to , one of the most liberal Democrats in the Senate, Barbara Boxer, just a couple years ago and said she was a huge fan of Van Jones, President Obama’s special advisor for green technologies and jobs. Oops. If you’re a good Republican, you hate Van Jones and everything he stands for! Just ask Sarah Palin!

Anyway, Meg Whitman’s attack ads made Poizner sound so good, we think he’d not only be a great candidate, but a great governor as well! On the Democratic ticket, we’ll have former governor Jerry Brown. Eh, I’ll probably vote for Jerry. He dated Linda Ronstadt the last time he was governor, over 30 years ago.

Which, strangely enough, was the last time California, as a state, had any sanity. That was before Howard Jarvis (and Paul Gann) and Proposition 13. Anyone over 40 probably remembers the ground shake that day in 1978 when the voters of California, 70% of whom showed up at the polls, voted overwhelmingly to pass Prop 13. No one ever looks at the long-term effects of these ballot initiatives … seriously.
 The “Three Strikes Law” is another example of the ballot initiative gone wild.

Since that day, we have had ballot initiative after ballot initiative, some times 3-4 pages of initiatives in each election. Really! Not just statewide proposals, but local and county measures as well. Everyone has gotten in on the act. A couple years ago I read that 85% of California’s budget is mandated by ballot initiatives. Can’t find that reference now, but that statistic has stuck with me ever since.

It doesn’t take an economics professor — or a Constitutional Scholar — to see what effect “true” democracy can have on a community, be it national, state or local. We call it “Dumbacracy.” Collectively, we as voters are as dumb as a rock. The best sound bites usually win. George W. Bush, if anyone wants a good example, or better yet, Ronald Reagan.

Barack Obama won the presidency because he mobilized millions of people who would have otherwise not voted, but also because the usual “independent” voters were so afraid of John McCain extending the Bush fiascos, they flipped and voted for the Democrat.
 Obama will have to work a little harder in 2012 if he runs for re-election. The “Independents” aren’t so happy with him at the moment.

So, back to California’s fiasco, which has been rolling along since Howard Jarvis and Paul Gann got their proposition passed in 1978. Property taxes can be no more than 1% of a property’s assessed value, and that value can only be raised by 2% or less per year and the assessment isn’t based on current market value of the property, but on the value at the time it was purchased.

Think about that. If you’re a homeowner and bought your place in 1980 for instance, you are still getting taxed at 1980 rates, with a few small increases over the years. Damn! The next owner will get assessed the current market value and pay property taxes accordingly, but the ballot measure eliminated 60% of the property tax revenue from California’s various local governments and ultimately the state’s treasury. And no body has figured out a way to make up for that since then.

Most Californians think it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread, even though they bitch about the decline in California’s educational system, the reductions in the police and fire services of our communities, the decline of our health care system — all three employing the most under-paid and under-appreciated professionals in our society: fire fighters, cops, teachers and nurses and those are the individuals who bear the brunt of budget cuts when the state legislature tries to balance the budget.

Howard Jarvis and his mad band of anti-tax fighters back Meg Whitman and that alone tells me who to vote for in June. Jarvis, it should be noted, passed away nearly 24 years ago but his Taxpayers Association is still going strong. Republicans still use his name in their campaigns because they know his name will get noticed by the voters. The actual name of the organization is the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association.

The man speaks from the grave. Yeah, the greatest thing since sliced bread. My doctors and nutritionists all tell me to stay away from sliced bread.

Walking Talking Spam

nospam@example.com (Tim Forkes) — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 12:01:00 -0700

Families and the relationships that develop among them are wonderful things — for some of us. In my family anyway, la Familia Farkas.

One of those relationships is with my nephew Dan. You can find a link to his blog, Eschew Obfuscation, at the top left of this page. All of my nieces and nephews are incredibly smart and that’s not just nepotistic bragging. They are seriously smart people. From Christopher right down to Emyli, and I will assume, little Bean too.

Daniel though, he’s not just smart, he’s a deep thinker, independent in many regards, fairly predictable in others, as many in his generation are, as any generation can be defined by its own idiosyncrasies.

Do I have a favorite niece or nephew? Nancy is pretty special. She joined the Navy and served as a corpsman with the Marines. That’s pretty damn special with me. My other nieces and nephews all have their personalities and they’re all pretty special. Christopher, for instance, is into hockey in a serious way and because of his tutelage on the subject, I sort of knew what the hell was happening when the U.S. hockey team beat the Canadian hockey team in the Olympics. Thanks Chris!

Back to Dan. A really nice guy, a decent bass player and now, as I’ve been informed, an upstanding, productive member of society! And still a deep thinker! In a Previous Blog Dan and I were discussing, through our comments on a particular rant, existentialism and nihilism, two philosophies that, because of societal misperception, get bad raps when often described or discussed in polite circles.

Of course we went pretty far a field of those two topics, as Dan and I often do when talking. After all, one thing always leads to another, and that discussion is a perfect example of the synchronicity of life. From the existential philosophy we get to a very cogent and consistent (with his overall philosophy) belief about aliens, the “not of this Earth” variety.
 By the way Dan, Sagan was one of our most brilliant minds!

So, when Dan sends me an e-mail titled “Want Some Tea?” and the only message is this: “What is your take on Sarah Palin?” Then I know he has something in mind.
 The title of the e-mail alone speaks volumes.

Dan already knows my political leanings, has an idea of my general sentiments regarding the former governor, so he’s looking for something else, something a little deeper. We can listen to the pundits, both for and against Sarah Palin, and quite frankly, the analysis is often pretty spot-on, even those who are pro Palin, because their analysis often makes excuses for Palin’s many shortcomings as a national political figure.

Dan doesn’t need me to regurgitate any of that although, really, most of the criticism of the quittin’ governor is what we really need to know. Let’s face it: she quit her job as governor so she could take advantage of her 15 minutes of fame to make millions of dollars. Good for her, but it shows her true commitment (or lack thereof) to public service.

Sarah Palin is an opportunist at best. She knows when to flip-flop on issues to appeal to her constituency and, as mentioned, she knew that finishing her term as governor might keep her from making those millions of dollars she is now making with her book and speaking fees.
 For instance, Palin got a nice six figures to be the keynote speaker at the Tea Bagger convention.

Quitting her job as governor may have been good for Alaska. Can any state, even one as below the radar as Alaska, afford a chief executive who often lies about her exploits, has a penchant for blaming others for her own gaffes and has exhibited such an ignorance of the core issues of our nation, it transcends embarrassment? Her knowledge of foreign affairs: she can see Russia from the western most island of Alaska. Well, if you go to Alaska’s border with The Yukon, she can see Canada as well, but apparently that slipped her mind.

Sarah Palin out does every other politician (in any party) in one regard: her flip-flopping on the issues. When she ran for governor in 2006 she was for the Gravina Island Bridge, the “Bridge to Nowhere” first proposed by former senator Ted Stevens and criticized so vociferously because it cost so much but serves such a small number of people.

But, when Palin was picked to be John McCain’s running mate, she was against the bridge. And then she back-pedaled a bit saying she was against the federal money tapped to build the bridge, not the bridge itself. But even that was inconsistent with her campaign rhetoric of 2006.

She flip-flopped on climate change — twice. First she didn’t believe the changing climate was due in large part to human activity, but when she became McCain’s running mate she changed that view, trying to tie her previous pronouncements to her campaign claims. Now that she’s a tea bagger darling, she’s back to claiming climate change has nothing to do with human activity.

And with the health care bill she truly made a giant flip-flop of gold medal-winning proportions. In 2008, before she was picked to be a vice presidential candidate, Governor Palin proclaimed, by official edict, “Healthcare Decisions Day” in which she and the state officially encouraged Alaska’s citizens to make living wills so relatives didn’t have to make awful choices when loved ones were at the ends of their lives.

In 2009, when health care became the national topic, Palin called those very same end of life decisions “Death Panels” and was firmly against it. What changed in those 12 months? She went from a virtually unknown politician (outside of Alaska) to a national figure with a small (but loud) following nationally and to appeal to that national following Sarah Palin couldn’t be for health care reform of any kind — even a reform she had previously endorsed and promoted.

That, my young nephew, is my long(er) answer. Sarah Palin is walking-talking e-mail spam. She will spew whatever needs to be spewed to win over her constituency, like regurgitating the bullshit we often see in those chain e-mails that make their way into our inboxes.

Dan’s reply was not quite as cogent as usual. Instead, he let his emotions take over. If he wishes to share his sentiments here with a comment, then by all means. Dan proves that past events and worry about the present and future can stir up even an existentialist.

Stimulating Reality

nospam@example.com (Tim Forkes) — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 08:01:00 -0700

Here it is, Thursday, February 18, 2010. My family and friends living in the Snow Belt probably don’t want to know that’s it’s been sunny and in the 70’s and 80’s here in Sandy Eggo, so we’ll just leave it at that. Actually, I’m chuckling … eh … soon enough it will start raining again, but for today, I’m chuckling!

There’s my older brother Rick though; wish he would consider relocating to Los Angeles. He’s a musician, a great keyboardist by any standard, and could possibly get some great gigs in L.A. I’d relocate to L.A. to join him. It would get him out of the horror of the Wisconsin winters and into a kinder, gentler climate.

Of course, Rick and I together, cut loose on Los Angeles, home to so many … err … sinny-type activities and sinny-type people like the two of us …

Which reminds me Wednesday was Ash Wednesday! I didn’t make it to church to get the Ashes. Didn’t make it to New Orleans for Fat Tuesday either. Somehow, Fat Tuesday sounds far more appealing than getting ashes criss-crossed on my forehead.

Yesterday was also the one-year anniversary of President Obama signing the stimulus bill. The one the Republicans in Congress love to dump on, but, when the stimulus money creates some jobs in their state for a civic project, they are all too happy to be there at the ribbon-cutting ceremonies and claim sole responsibility for that money making it to that particular project. Hypocrisy, thy name is Republican!

Which brings up the Mount Vernon Statement, a little gimmick cooked up by some establishment “conservatives” to try and gain the support of the “grassroots” movement known as the Tea Baggers. Or Tea Party, if you want to be kind to them.

This is funny: part of this gimmick includes a plank of beliefs, one of which is this: “It honors the central place of individual liberty in American politics and life.”

They honor personal liberty, unless of course the personal liberties you wish to engage in go contrary to their religious and/or political views. Things like a woman having the final say over her reproductive system and overall health; if you like to smoke marijuana, or, if like me, you like to view naked women on the internets or in magazines and frequent establishments that offer nude and semi-nude women dancing for our pleasure.

Their view of personal liberty doesn’t cover any of those and I would venture to guess many others, like being guaranteed we are free from unreasonable searches and seizures. The assault on the Fourth Amendment by Republicans, ever since President Ronald Reagan was in office, has been horrendous.

If you go through an airport scanner and the TSA workers find you with a large amount of cash, an undetermined number, you can be flagged as a potential drug dealer and have all your belongings confiscated. With no evidence to suggest you have any connection to any crimes whatsoever. Thank President Reagan for that one; it was part of his agenda, although we should also put some blame squarely on the shoulders of the Democrat-controlled Congress that passed the bill that created the assault on the Bill of Rights.

Now of course, thanks to the previous president and the Republican-controlled government from 2002 to 2007, we have the Patriot Act that lets the federal government erode our liberties even further. Sadly, the current administration has done nothing to do away with those parts of the act that infringe on our liberties as once guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment of the Bill of Rights,

Enough of that tangent, although it’s a pretty good one.

Most egregious though is their claim that some in this land are against the Constitution are actively trying to do away with it. This is the heart of the teabaggers hatred for President Obama. For them, the president is both a Socialist and a Fascist.
 The teabaggers are now claiming that Hitler and the German Nazis were really closet Socialists!

The claim is that the president and his fellow Democrats are trying to usurp the Constitution with programs like the health care bill and the Stimulus Plan that is now a year old. Really. And these are the same guys who cooked up the Patriot Act and nearly 30 years ago, the law that allows federal employees to confiscate your belongings based on nothing but a hunch.

The signers of the Mount Vernon Statement are against the Stimulus Plan because it is running up the national debt and growing government. These are the same guys who rubber-stamped President George W. Bush’s policies for six and a half years, budgets that had our treasury go from a surplus into debt. And the kicker is, they did it five times with “reconciliation,” the process by where the controlling party of both Houses of Congress get together and pass a bill without the support of the minority party.

If the health care plan does pass and is put on President Obama’s desk to be signed, it will be done through reconciliation. No Republicans have any plans to vote for the bill so it is the only way health care will be passed in America — and it still won’t go far enough to alleviate the suffering Americans go through because they are either uninsured or under insured — or worse yet, the health care insurance companies drop their insurance coverage due to things like pre-existing conditions.

Republicans have used the filibuster over 200 times since the Democrats took control of Congress — and these are the same people who, nearly five years ago, threatened to use the “nuclear option” (eliminating the filibuster) if the Democrats tried to filibuster any of their proposals, like expanding the national debt and prolonging the war in Iraq. And that includes Mr. Maverick himself, John McCain.

The truly entertaining thing about the Republicans and the anniversary of the Stimulus Plan is this: in front of national cameras and media, people like House Minority Whip Eric Cantor and Senator Kit Bond rail and flail against the Stimulus Plan, but then quietly sign documents asking the federal government for stimulus money for projects in their states and districts.

They even show up at the ribbon cutting ceremonies, holding the giant promotional copies of the federal checks from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, President Obama’s stimulus plan — and tell their constituents just how well the Stimulus Plan is working!

Think Progress has a pretty nice list of the hypocrites who railed against the Stimulus Plan but asked for and received stimulus money

The president gave a pretty good speech Wednesday and had the political courage to point out the hypocrisy of his opponents. When the mid-term elections come around, let’s hope the Democrats use these facts in their campaigns against the Republicans who will be up for re-election, making sure the Republican Party’s newest constituency, the ones they wrote and signed the Mount Vernon Statement to impress, the teabaggers, see it. Gotta wonder if they will be unimpressed.

Or maybe, filled with their hatred for President Obama, the teabaggers will ignore reality and vote for the hypocrites because let’s face it, what many of the teabaggers really don’t like is a Black Man with a Muslim name as President of the United States. That’s what it’s really all about and for the teabaggers anything is better than that reality.

Saint Valentine’s Day!

nospam@example.com (Tim Forkes) — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 12:01:00 -0700

Today is Saint Valentine’s Day, when all our thoughts turn to romance and love. Eh, I have no one to “love” today, in that rather narrow concourse called romance, but I love a lot of women! And I ain’t referring to the models that populate my friends list on MySpace, although for them: I like quite a few — met many of them — but mainly it’s lust, pure and simple.

Well, maybe there are a couple that could and would have my heart tied up in knots of anguished ardor. I can’t do romance without worry and stress. There’s always the looking good part, the good grooming. Then the saying the right things and not saying all the wrong things; not getting all twisted inside when I’m not with them and then getting vexed beyond description when I am with them … it’s enough to drive a man insane!

The worst thing a man can do is take his lover for granted. Well, next to abusing her of course. The other bad thing to do in a relationship is to always be looking for the next girl who might be coming around that corner. That’s probably my worst offense, although taking someone for granted ranks high on my list of faults.

Guys are rarely satisfied. There are some who are satisfied with their spouses, I may even know one — two tops … well okay, three, but I ain’t naming names — but for the most part, men are always striking up conversations with every woman they come in contact with in social settings. Especially if the women are attractive. And especially married/taken men.

It’s not like most of them would actually cheat on or dump their spouses, but married/taken guys get a vicarious sexual thrill whenever they get the opportunity to give another woman a hug or kiss. The married/taken guys reading this will vehemently deny it, and that’s okay. It’s all part of the sexual dance.

Me, I much prefer shaking hands. There are a few women in my life I hug because we know each other well enough that there won’t be any mistake in our motives. Not to say my motives with every woman I hug are pure. Not in the least. There is one woman I’ll hug today because she is not just a sweet friend, but she is curvaceous and sexy and let’s face it, having her tight up against my body for a few seconds feels pretty damn good! And she knows it — I told just about as much.

But, it’s not likely she and I will become lovers … sigh … my relationships never last long anyway. Maybe my view on relationships is a bit skewed, but trying to measure up to some ideal, usually one I’ve implanted in the relationship through my innate ability to over think every situation, just seems so hard and time-consuming.

This is just a humorous aside: guitarist/singer John Mayer is interviewed in the latest issue of Playboy. He talks about his relationships with the famous women he’s dated, like Jessica Simpson and Jennifer Aniston. In so many words, he said he couldn’t help disappointing them because he’s only 32 and he’s gotta act like a 32 year old man.

But then he goes on to say he’s done with quickie sex romps and hooking up with a woman just because she looks hot. Really? Mayer claims he prefers masturbating to actual sex. Talk about complicated. Well, I see his point though: when you’re done with yourself you don’t have to roll over in the morning and ask someone, “How you doin’?”

Prostitutes are good, if you can afford them as a steady diet — like Tiger Woods. “I wanna be like Tiger!” Several of the women who are reported to have had sex with Woods said they were well paid for their time and services. I’m so envious — a few of them are/were Playboy models.

This is getting a little far a field from Valentine’s Day, but what does a single person think and write about on this day? Sex, mainly. No poet writes a great verse of love unless he or she is in love. When they aren’t in love, they’re lamenting love lost or unrequited and even worse, the vagaries and pitfalls of being single.
 You know, I feel duped by all the love songs I grew up with in the 1960’s. It was all bullshit! If my views on love and sex are skewed I blame the pop music of the ‘60’s.
 Except for Connie Francis. “Where the Boys Are” is one of my favorite songs!

Of course, I may be a little jaded, even for a single man. Sheesh, even when I was in love I didn’t have a clue and no amount of Shakespeare or Neruda could change that.

 In this part of the story I am the one who
Dies, the only one, and I will die of love because I love you,
Because I love you, Love, in fire and blood.
 Pablo Neruda, “I Do Not Love You, Except Because I Love You”

No help there, that one, other than to confirm my anguish over being in love. So, what am I thinking about as I write? Not love, not even romance. Actually, I’m wondering what my friends who are married or taken are doing for their significant others. A couple dozen roses, great chocolate and a romantic dinner sounds like a good idea. Hell, I don’t know. My friend Greg bought his wife a new car.

So, until that day comes, if that day ever comes, when I find myself in love and in a relationship with the one I love, romantic love is just an abstract topic of conversation. I mean, do we even get to choose who we fall in love with?

Until then, to the women in my life who enrich it with their wit and personalities, the ones I was thinking of when this essay began: thank you and Happy Valentine’s Day! I appreciate your love and forbearance.

Truly a Derriere Faux Pas

nospam@example.com (Tim Forkes) — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 08:01:00 -0700

Joy of Joys! The Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue is on the stands! Millions upon millions of boys, ages 8 to 80, were looking forward — nay — were waiting at their local convenience stores for the magazine to appear in the racks of their favorite convenience stores.

This is funny: there are chains that will sell the S.I. Swimsuit Issue, as well as the “Laddie” magazines like Maxim and FHM, but they won’t sell Playboy or other men’s magazines that feature entirely nude models. The hypocrisy is incredible. No matter, we’re looking forward to the Swimsuit Issue here!

Just to gain access to all of the Sports Illustrated online content, I may subscribe to the magazine. I used to do that, read maybe two or three issues a year, just so’s I could, in one day, download all the Swimsuit Issue content. Sadly, it’s a lesson in futility I’ve had to learn year after year because, let’s face it, looking at really hot women in swimsuits and coyly covering up their mammary glands is really just a tease. Heck, do a Google search for naked women and voila! You might even find a few of the Swimsuit Issue models sans clothing.

This is funny: after all these years, over 40 (I think), people still protest the magazine with the same screams of horror people were using when the magazine first published a Swimsuit Issue. Here’s a clue to all those who shake and jerk in a frenzy when the Swimsuit Issue hits the news stands: it isn’t going away. It’s the magazine’s most popular issue.

Time Warner, the parent company of the magazine, puts more money, time and effort into that issue than any other because it sells and, more importantly, it sells subscriptions to the magazine. Probably to guys like me who will subscribe just to get the online content the TW suits hold back just so we will subscribe. Business is business and they figured this out.

After a few years I stopped subscribing because the subscriber-only content was hardly more … err … revealing … than the “free” content. In fact, over the years, the Swimsuit Issue has become more conservative with the attire. The zenith of their swimsuit models has to be Cheryl Tiegs in that fishnet one-piece that caused such a stir over 30 years ago.

Sports Illustrated could cause a great (and welcome) blast of subscribers and protestors if they had more revealing photos of their body painted models. Just my humble suggestion, but I doubt that will happen because the trend has been to be a little more conservative. But, if they saved those photos for those of us who subscribe for the content —and offered them in extremely high resolution — I bet their subscriptions would go through the roof. I’m just saying.

Super model Brooklyn Decker is the cover model, a big deal for models. She was on Late Night With David Letterman and was … not quite as entertaining as Jennifer Garner, who had the two segments prior to Decker’s appearance. She is married to tennis star Andy Roddick, for any of you who might harbor any unrequited fantasies. This is just a guess, I don’t really know, Decker is not only 30+ years younger than me, but she’s likely to be at least four inches taller than me. Super models always leave me feeling short. Any fantasies I might harbor for a S.I. Swimsuit model get dashed as soon as I read their stats.

“Stats,” you ask? Age, height, weight and measurements. It is a sports magazine after all. There has to be stats in every issue.

What’s truly humorous about the tumult over the publication of the Swimsuit Issue is the inclusion of swimsuit photos of über skier Lindsey Vonn. Not just Vonn, but fellow Winter Olympic athletes Hannah Teter (snowboarding), Clair Bidez (snowboarding) and Lacy Schnoor (skiing).

The controversy over Lindsey Vonn began with the February 5, 2010 issue that featured Vonn on the cover, in her skiing gear and the downhill tuck speed skiers crouch in when they’re flying down a mountain at about 70 miles per hour.
 I’m afraid to sled down a hill at 20 mph!
 Hell, I don’t even like going near snow!

The problem with the photo? It’s too sexually suggestive. If we were only kidding. I guess seeing the fine contour of Vonn’s fine, fine derriere was too much for the puritans of the land. Sports Illustrated has featured male athletes in similar poses. And who can forget Michael Phelps — and Mark Spitz all those years ago — gold medals around their necks, on the cover shirtless. No cries of horror over that type of display.

But, if it’s a woman athlete we need to adopt different standards because, golly, it would be objectifying to show them in a pose that might suggest something sexual. Or, equally pernicious, women are the Biblical founts of seduction, temptation and ultimately evil and we need to hysterically avoid any displays that might tempt men to commit evil acts, like masturbating! Ah bullshit.

Women’s figure skating, for instance, will be very sexual for a lot of men. Scantily clad women twirling around the TV screen? But, the broadcasters will succumb to the puritan pressures of a few and crop the camera shots so as not to be too revealing of the women’s bodies. They do it every time women’s figure skating — or gymnastics — is shown on television. Here in the United States anyway.

The trouble with that is, when someone is figure skating, their entire body is part of the routine and something very technical and/or beautiful that is part of that routine is being lost to the viewers because in the U.S. we have this nonsensical notion about sex and the female body.
 Which brings up another issue: there is no women’s ski jumping competition in the Olympics because somehow making ski jumps affects those “female” parts on women. Really.
 A few years ago the president of the International Ski Jumping Federation, Gian-Franco Kasper, said it could be damaging to female parts. His words: “It’s like jumping down, let’s say, about two meters on the ground about a thousand times a year which seems not to be appropriate for ladies from a medical point of view.”
 The IOC has a lot of better excuses now, none of which hold water when men’s events are put to those standards, but this is a whole different can of worms from the one’s surrounding Lindsey Vonn and her cover photo on Sports Illustrated. But it does show a consistent bias and attitude towards women competing in sports.

Friends in Canada tell me that the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation doesn’t crop the camera shots or put up message banners across the bottom of the TV screen to block what might be shown, as their American counterparts do here.

Back to Lindsey Vonn. My hope is, after these Olympics she will pose for Playboy as Olympic swimmer Amanda Beard did after the 2004 Summer Olympics. Now that was a celebrity photo spread worth viewing! As for Vonn’s cover photo, I didn’t realize it had sexual overtones until critics pointed it out. That’s when I noticed just how fine a derriere Vonn has in that suit!
 Sadly, Vonn may miss competing in these Olympics due to a shin injury.

The real crime with that particular cover: look at the positioning of Vonn’s fine, fine derriere in relation to the words “Sports Illustrated.”

“PU?” That just kills any boner a guy might get admiring Lindsey Vonn’s fine form. Someone at Sports Illustrated needs to be smacked upside the head for that faux pas. Eh, I’ll just page through the photos of Vonn and her fellow Olympians in their bikinis — after I fill out the form to order a subscription to the magazine. Jeez, I’m a sucker through and through.

A Recall Of My Miasmas

nospam@example.com (Tim Forkes) — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 16:01:00 -0700

San Diego, despite its reputation for having little change in weather patterns, is a place of diversity. A 45-minute drive from here and one can be in mountains of snow. Truly. Julian, a quaint little town known chiefly for it’s apples and apple pies, has snow.

We have the Cuyamaca Mountains in San Diego County, which are connected to the San Jacinto Mountains, which are connected to the Laguna Mountains, which are connected to the San Bernardino Mountains, that are connected to the San Gabriel Mountains, connected to the … I’m forgetting here … it all connects in some way to the great mountain ranges of the West Coast.

You see, this being California, we can’t have just one mountain range, like say the Rockies, which are shared by several states. Naah. We have a number of ranges and who the Hell can keep them all straight? Geologists, one might suspect and they could probably tell you where each one begins and ends and every significant feature of each and every mountain range.
 Did you know: the San Andreas Fault, most commonly recognized for its earthquakes in Northern California, divides the San Gabriel Mountains from the San Bernardino Mountains in Southern California. That’s a pretty long fault line.

Anyway, all of those mountain ranges, all of which are less than a four-hour drive away from here, are covered in snow. People from San Diego coastal areas, where we have sunny days like we are having now (between rain storms) perfect for going to the beach, go to the snow resorts in these various Southern California ranges for skiing and snowboarding.

Olympic and X-Game snowboarding champion Shaun White is from Carlsbad, a suburb of San Diego. He obviously spends a lot of winter somewhere in the snow. He’s also a pretty good skateboarder, but after getting badly hurt as a young lad his parents put him on a snowboard, thinking that would be a slower, safer sport. Parents! You gotta love their optimism! I saw all that on 60 Minutes the other night.

Read this on Wikipedia so you know it’s true: you can go surfing in the morning and snowboarding in the afternoon during winter, if you live in Southern California! Hell yeah! People here do that. Put their surfboards and snow boards on top of the Toyota Priuses and zlip! Off they go from South Carlsbad Beach to Big Bear Mountain resort!

Well, maybe they’ve brought their Prius — or other Toyota vehicle — back to the dealer due to the massive recall, which, in toto, may cost the world’s largest automaker 3-4 billion dollars or more when all the recalls are done. Toyota is a big brand in California. Ask 10 people in San Diego, “What brand of car should I buy?” and most likely nine of them will say “Toyota.” It’s been the most reliable brand of automobile for 25-plus years and it all started in America right here in San Diego County! Rose Toyota is America’s first Toyota dealership! Or so they say.

So would it be wise to drive a small vehicle like a Prius into snowy ranges like the San Bernardino Mountains, even if it didn’t have a problem with its brake pedals? Back in the day I drove that Mazda RX-7 up I-15 over the Cajon Pass on my way to Las Vegas. It scared me, as much as spinning out on Hwy 76.

Can’t imagine driving such a small vehicle up to a snow resort. You need chains on the tires and maybe that wouldn’t even be enough to keep it from going off the road and over a cliff. My brother Carl and I took my 1994 Lincoln Mark-XIII to the Denver area twice, once for Thanksgiving and again for my sister Lainey’s wedding. Getting over the Vail Pass on I-70 just a few hours west of Denver in late November scared the crap out of us. And there was snow on the ground when we made the trip in August. A lot of snow.

Wouldn’t do that again, at least not during the winter.

Now, I don’t and won’t go find snow. Growing up in Wisconsin cured me of any affection for the stuff. Possibly, if there were a girlfriend and I were truly, truly in love and she loved the cold and snow … err … I’d wave as she drove away for the weekend. Besides, having the girlfriend — or wife — away for the weekend means we can spend a night or two at Cheetah’s or Pure Platinum! I prefer Cheetah’s; it’s all-nude.
 I have friends with wives who think I’m a bad influence. Let’s be honest, I enjoy that noteriety!

Occasionally, I have to scroll back to the top of this screed just to remember what in the Hell this is about. I’ve forgotten. Whatever the original intent, it’s been lost in a miasma of snow, geography, auto recalls and now, if it continues, nude women.

Were it possible, I’d write a lot about nude women, but to be honest, I get too distracted looking at nude women. Don’t think I could write more than a few words.

This was intended to have a connection to the awesome weather of San Diego and Southern California in general. The Great Lakes and Mid Atlantic areas are getting buried in snow as they have all winter long with the rest of the Snow Belt. When I watch the Weather Channel, as I often do before going to work, I can’t help but smile! And then get worried about family members who live in those areas. We are getting older and things like cleaning snow off the sidewalks, even if you use a snowblower, can be deadly.

Not to mention having your vehicle slide off the road or into another vehicle, falling and breaking a limb — sheesh, the list could go on. Wish my brother Rick would move to SoCal. We could share a place somewhere in the Los Angeles area.

If a guy is going to think and act like a teenager for the rest of his life, this is the place to do it. The other day I was riding the Trusty Trek down Mira Mesa Blvd and saw a guy, a little younger than me, driving a nice Toyota. Maybe he didn’t get the e-mail about the recall. Anyway, the thought ran through my mind, I should grow up, get a real job and start driving a car.

Then I saw the line of 50 cars (or more) in each of the East-West lanes waiting for the light to change and dispensed that thought but quickly. Eh, pedaling up Erma Rd every morning has its drawbacks and quite frankly, it’s getting old. But the idea of monthly automobile expenses?

One of these days and maybe sooner than later. Being “green” is nice, and the daily exercise is great. My body was letting me know it has been too long without the daily workout, but after a while, reality sets in. Once in a while, having a car instead of relying on a bicycle and public transit makes more sense. Especially when sharing a bus with a bunch of people who are as wet and smelly as me, after pedaling to the bus stop in the rain.

The question is, do I get something “economical” like a small car that has obvious problems in bad weather, or get a big vehicle, like that Lincoln Mark-XIII? Which, by-the-bye, got 32 miles to the gallon on the highway.

Don’t know, but I’m fairly certain my next car won’t be a Toyota.

Ghosts and the President

nospam@example.com (Tim Forkes) — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 05:17:25 -0700

Wright-Patterson Air Force Base is haunted. Saw it on Ghost Hunters Wednesday Night. Why in the world could the Air Force allow the TAPS crew to sneak on base? Actually, TAPS was invited by the Air Force and received clearance from the Pentagon to do an investigation.

The episode was all right, but I was hoping the investigators would stumble upon the bodies of deceased aliens. That’s the trouble with expectations; life rarely ever lives up to them.

My nephew Dan and I once got into a MySpace discussion about something, the subject of which was soon forgotten as we veered off into whatever tangents came along and believe me, Dan and I can spur each other’s tangents!

Dan, from what I recall (I don’t feel like looking it up), has no expectations for anything, writing that if things weren’t great he wouldn’t be upset and if things were going good he could choose to be happy about it. Dan appears to be a bit of a nihilist existentialist. He might disagree with that, but if he is a nihilist Dan has no expectations of my opinions of him so he wouldn’t care or react.

I’ll make sure Young Dan reads this so he can correct me in case I’m wrong about him. Maybe he’ll write a reply, which would be good. When Dan disagrees with me he does it so cogently and with such erudite precision, it is not only a good read, it makes me think, “huh … he might be right.”

Of course I would never tell him that, to let him know he was right about something and possibly smarter than me. Nirvana forbid.
 Here’s a brief aside, a tangent if you will. Since about 1989 I’ve felt a need to explain that the Nirvana mentioned above is not the Seattle rock band. In fact, my use of it isn’t even correct if one wants to refer to its spiritual origin (Absolute Truth). But I’ll keep it there anyway!
 Actually, it’s probably very appropriate.

So, back to Ghost Hunters. I was hoping, and am always hoping, to see a ghost show up on the cameras. Not just the infrared thermal imaging cameras, but one of those night-vision equipped cameras. A real ghost smiling for the cameras. Hasn’t happened in all the episodes I’ve seen.

Sure, they’ve had unexplained visages on those thermal imaging cameras, and I’ve thought, “Huh, could be a ghost!”

And they’ve had disembodied voices replying to questions asked by the investigators or telling the investigators, in shades of The Amityville Horror, “Get Out!” Now that can scare the crap out of someone, me at least. I’ve read the book and saw the original movie twice!

But, so far, no ghost smiling for the camera. Why is that? Are shameless self-promoters and media hounds forbidden from becoming ghosts? I’d like to come back as a ghost, smile for the ghost hunter cameras and play some insane pranks on people, you know, tickle someone’s toes, tap them on the shoulder. I’d be a great ghost. Casper, but with a naughtier attitude!

So, the real deal here was going to be about President Obama’s first State of the Union Address. Wednesday Nights are usually spent watching three hours of Ghost Hunters, hoping one day to see the smiling face of a ghost show up on one of their cameras.

But, because of President Obama’s speech, I had to miss the first hour of Ghost Hunters. The president knows how to give a speech and this one was great. Of course all the Republican naysayers disagree. Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor who can’t seem to use nine-eleven often enough to promote his agenda, even got on FOX and claimed the president never addressed national security.

Actually, the president spent more than ten minutes talking about it and referenced it about a dozen other times during his speech. Gotta wonder if Giuliani actually watched the speech.

The Republicans in the joint chamber of the Capitol never applauded and John Boehner, the house minority leader, looked absolutely on the verge of rage. Eric Cantor, the little congressman (and Republican Whip) from Virginia, looked dumbfounded as usual. One of these days he’ll lose that deer-in-the-headlights look.

In his first year as president I’d say Barack Obama has proven to be a bit of a wimp. He had a huge majority in Congress, sky-high approval ratings with the American public and he didn’t get health care done. Obama wanted to be the nice guy and try to improve the political atmosphere in Washington. It didn’t work. The Republicans signaled from the beginning they were not going to play along.

While President Obama tried to create a political scene of bipartisanship, the Republicans were taking out all the stops to discredit and smear him. And their tactics, played out primarily by the teabaggers, worked. To this day these nutcases call Obama both a Socialist and a Nazi! Boggles the fuckin’ mind but not one TV pundit has pointed out the absurdity of it. The teabaggers insist Obama is a Socialist and a Nazi because the name of Hitler’s political party was the National Socialist Workers Party.

They of course don’t mention that Hitler’s internal enemies, other than Jews, were capitalists, liberals, communists and socialists. One just needs to read anything Hitler wrote or the text of just about any speech and figure out neither Hitler nor his party were socialists.

Americans, many of us, sadly, choose to remain ignorant for expediency. Why get the facts when the jingoism and sound bites sound so appealing. Then there are the racist attacks on the president, none of which have been refuted by Republicans. President Obama had the high ground.

Barack Obama should have used his bully pulpit to bully health care reform through Congress — with the public option. Obama had more political capital than any president since Ronald Reagan and he squandered it.

Playing nice sounds like a great idea, but if the other side doesn’t want to play then it’s time to kick’em in the balls and let’em know who rules the roost.

Self-Appraisal Myth Utilization

nospam@example.com (Tim Forkes) — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 00:01:00 -0700

We’ve been getting torrential rain here in San Diego — nearly all of California actually. My friend Scott (and a few others) has been graciously providing rides to and from work during these storms, which is really nice. It beats walking to and from the bus stops in the rain, waiting at the bus stop in the rain and putting up with fellow bus riders who are just as soaked with rain and therefore just as crabby.

Having a motor vehicle makes inclement weather so much easier to bear; one can just travel from here to there without a care in the world. Well, maybe a few worries pertinent to rain-slicked roads and the California drivers who occupy them. You see, any California vehicle can and will hydroplane at any time as we have found out on a few occasions.

Years ago I owned a 1988 Mazda RX-7 GXL, one of the best production sports cars ever built. It had the famous rotary engine and could easily reach speeds of 160 MPH-plus. I could only coax it to 130 MPH before I shit my pants. Did that only once, out in the desert northeast of San Diego, on my way to a place called Borrego Springs.

The shittin’ in the pants part happened when, as I was traveling along Highway 78 through the desert, at the afore-mentioned 130 MPH, out of the corner of my right eye I saw a coyote running like a crazy man in a direction that suggested a collision with my RX-7 was imminent. I couldn’t actually glance to my right since my eyes were glued to the road ahead, the speed itself scaring the crap out of me alone!

Up ahead was what looked like an RV and wouldn’t you know it, there was an RV on that stretch of HWY 78. We were the only two vehicles I had seen since leaving Julian. More on that part of the journey later.

So, deciding it was time to slow down I took my foot off the gas pedal to let it ease to a manageable speed when all of a sudden, without me noticing in advance, the little RX-7 hit some dips in the road. I was airborne.

That was just about the time I shit my pants.

There had been some close calls earlier in the trip. Hwy 78 goes from the ocean in Oceanside, east to … I don’t know where it ends really, Indio maybe, but it doesn’t matter. As you wind your way from Escondido the terrain begins to climb into altitudes of about 5,000 to 8,000 feet. Julian is situated in some small mountains and needless to say, there are winding roads with walls of rock on one side and cliffs with long drops on the other side of the road.

So, while zipping down the Eastern slopes of the Cuyamaca Mountains, at speeds well above what would be considered prudent for mountainous winding roads, I spun out — twice. Once coming so close to the edge of one of those cliffs I thought I would shit my pants.

The other time I spun out it was into oncoming traffic. I thought I was just about to shit my pants.

Thankfully, I made it to Borrego Springs in one piece and decided that a reasonable route back to San Diego was in order, at equally reasonable and prudent speeds.

One other time while driving that RX-7, the most dangerous vehicle I’ve ever owned, I shit my pants, but this time it wasn’t due to idiocy. Well, not a lot anyway. One morning while driving 70 MPH up I-15 on my way to work in Carlsbad, it started raining, an immediate downpour! So, I took my foot off the gas pedal and voila! My little RX-7 — the most dangerous vehicle I’ve ever owned — began hydroplaning and spun three times in the early morning traffic.

Thankfully I didn’t hit anyone, but when it came to rest, the RX-7 was facing the oncoming, northbound traffic, the back bumper resting against a guard rail that may or may not have prevented me from going over the edge of the embankment onto the off ramp going down to Rancho Bernardo Rd.

That was about the time I shit my pants.

So, I drove about 45 MPH to the next exit and took a side street home. No one really wants to go to work with soiled clothes.

Southern California roads are not meant for inclement weather. When it rains, all the grease, oil and burned up rubber that’s been accumulating for months becomes as slick as ice and cars will go crashing into each other, their brakes as useless as tits on a nun.
 Sorry, just had to put that in there.

After a few days of rain some drivers begin to drive sensibly for the weather conditions. There are bigger intervals between cars and of course everyone is driving slower. But there are the usual yahoos who insist on driving 70 MPH on the freeways, without a care in the world.

California needs the rain — and snow. We’ve been in a drought for years now and the few feet of water we might get during these rainstorms will go far in relieving some of that burden, but it won’t be enough, even if it is the predicted 20 inches. We can’t expect a decade of drought to be erased by a couple weeks of rainstorms in one year.

In the past six-plus years we have had wild fires up and down the state leaving much of the landscape barren of, or sporting very little vegetation. This of course leads to mudslides and in our neighborhood that can be a problem. This area of the city is one big plot of hills, tall, steep hills, filled with homes, condos, apartments and businesses.

When it rains like this I often wonder what it would take to cause that big mountain of condos directly east of us to come crashing down on everything. There is landscaping on that portion of the hills that fronts Scripps Ranch Blvd, but is that really enough to prevent a disaster?

Maybe not, but it has stood the test of time and several other wet, rainy winters.

The scariest things about this weather are the rain-soaked roads and the people driving on them. This year I’ve elected not to ride the Trusty Trek during this kind of weather, mainly to avoid getting sick. But avoiding the drivers on rain-slick roads is another good reason to avoid riding a bicycle in the rain — and I don’t ride on the streets. These drivers could go sliding in any direction in hopes of avoiding a collision.

You should see them on the freeways; a long line of jammed cars moving roughly 10 MPH in the rain and you have those people accelerating then quickly braking, accelerating then quickly braking, accelerating then quickly braking, for what seems like an eternity, just in hopes that they can go as fast as they can without letting anyone cut in front of them. Can’t imagine what that does to a car’s engine and brakes.

They drive like that on the city streets as well, but even crazier. They cut corners, weave back and forth in their lane and often crunch over into the bike lane looking for any room to squeeze past the car in front of them, just to be one more car length ahead in the mass of vehicles parked in the traffic jam.

It would be funny if they weren’t a threat to everyone around them, including pedestrians and bicyclists. Which is one reason to buy an automobile. Be protected against the vagaries of the road as well as traveling in comfort, avoiding the rain. I could feel snobby riding past people waiting at bus stops in the rain. “Look at me! I have a car! Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!”

Yeah, having a car seems like the appropriate answer to all my problems today, or at least my commuting problems. No more asking friends for rides, no more leaving for work 90 minutes before my start time and I could drive at insane speeds up and down the freeways!

That’s what I call Self-appraisal myth utilization: a little lie to convince myself life would be better if [fill in the blank]. It passes the time while I’m sitting there, waiting for the bus, imagining all those drivers laughing at me and the other bus riders standing in the rain.

Maybe I should get another RX-7.

No Joy in San Diego Today

nospam@example.com (Tim Forkes) — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 06:01:00 -0700

Damn Chargers … Damn Packers …

At least the Cowboys lost … to those damn Minnesota Vikings. There’s no joy in Mudville tonight. Okay, that’s a baseball reference, but one can imagine the fans of the Toledo Mudhens are football fans too. Not to mention, there is a Mudville Flats here in San Diego. Well, it’s a vacation rental place.

So, neither the Packers nor the Chargers are in the playoffs. How can both teams lose playoff games at home? Life’s tough for sports fans. Your team struggles for an entire season, makes it to one playoff game and then — poof — they lose to a team that wasn’t supposed to make the playoffs in the first place.

There was a program on ESPN the other night about how the Atlanta Falcons won the NFC Championship game and went on to the Super Bowl — only to lose to the Denver Broncos.

The Falcons played the Minnesota Vikings for the NFC championship and what was so striking about that program was a comment from one of the Vikings players. On his team losing to the Falcons, after winning all but one game during that season (1998 the Falcons lost two games), the Vikings player said the better team didn’t win that day. Now that’s audacity.

It was a close game for sure, went into overtime, but at the end of the day the best team wins the game and on that day, the best team was the Atlanta Falcons.

Then there is Cowboys linebacker Keith Brooking. At the end of their game with the Minnesota Vikings, with only two minutes left and the Vikings leading by 24 points, Brett Favre threw an 11-yard touchdown pass to Visanthe Shiancoe, bringing the score (with the PAT) to 34-3.

Brooking went storming over to the Vikings sideline screaming about running up the score. After the game he vented (again) to the media about Favre and the Vikings running up the score. “I thought it was totally classless and disrespectful. This is the NFL, that's not what this is about,” adding that the Vikings would have to face the Cowboys next year.

Yeah, Brooking is in the NFL, a professional sports league where, as Brooking pointed out in his media rant, he is paid to stop the Vikings from scoring. If the Cowboys didn’t want the Vikings to score, then they should have done their jobs and stopped the Vikings from scoring.

As Chris Chase said in his Yahoo sports blog, just because the Cowboys quit playing before the final whistle doesn’t mean the Vikings had to quit playing as well.

Yep, everyone will remember that incident come next season — as all the networks play and replay the touchdown and Brooking’s crybaby rant, over and over and over again. I won’t use the text message shorthand, I’ll just write: Shut The Fuck Up!

Until Sunday, the San Diego Chargers were the second best team in the AFC, behind only the Baltimore Colts … err, the Indianapolis Colts. That should be edited, the Colts have been in Indianapolis for more than 25 years, but the way the team left Baltimore in 1984 (owned by Robert Irsay at the time) reminds everyone that football is first and foremost an entertainment business. It’s all about the money.

Sunday, the best team on the field in Qualcomm Stadium was the New York Jets. The Chargers 13-3 regular season record doesn’t matter. The fact that they were eight point favorites before the game doesn’t matter. They couldn’t win this game and that made their opponents the best team.

Every year Chargers fans say the same thing the fans of 30 other teams say right around this time of year: “Next season.”

The next season rolls around and … in the case of the Chargers the team starts out like it’s going to end the season with a losing record. This season the Chargers won their last 11 games. It gave hope to all the fans that this was the year, that their team — our team — would only have to beat those hated Indianapolis Colts and win the Super Bowl.

It was not to be.

I’m still a Green Bay Packers fan, but having lived in San Diego all these years and watched the Chargers, with players like Junior Seau, Natrone Means, Darren Sproles, LaDanian Tomlison, Philip Rivers and Stan Humphries, the Chargers have grown on me. Well, the team and their dance squad! The Packers don’t have a dance squad.

Stan Humphries … everyone, almost universally, agrees Dan Fouts is the greatest quarterback to ever lead the Chargers. Well, his stats and induction into the NFL Hall of Fame would actually confirm that, but there can and should be a lot said for Stan Humphries being the best QB to ever take a snap for the Chargers.

Tough, intelligent and occasionally mobile — often by necessity — he didn’t have the “talent” of Dan Fouts, but Humphries had the heart, making him resilient to a fault, as witnessed when he had to retire in 1997 after receiving and playing with too many brain concussions. Stan Humphries should be in the Hall of Fame. He has the numbers, but more than that, Stan Humphries is one of those rare players who rose above expectations and carried his team to championships. Can’t imagine anyone would dispute that.

Who can forget the Chargers beating the Pittsburgh Steelers, in Three Rivers Stadium, rallying from a 13-3 deficit to win the 1994 AFC Championship? One of the greatest upsets in NFL history. Then, as every Chargers fan remembers, they lost Super Bowl XXIX to the San Francisco 49’s, with an abysmal score of 49-26.

This was going to be the year, like the 2006 season, and why dredge up that horror. Did that less than a month ago anyway. Now the question is, will coach Norv Turner be back, as well as the greatest running back in Chargers history, LaDanian Tomlinson? Not to mention Shawne Merriman. With his checkered off-field life, it’s not likely the All-Pro linebacker will be playing in San Diego come August.

But, like all NFL fans everywhere, I (we) have hope for the future. I’m still a Packers fan to be sure, but after nearly 20 years in San Diego I’m a more of a Chargers fan. It’s the truth. Winning, punctuated by adversity, has a way of making one a fan.

Maybe next season.
•••• •••• •••• •••• •••• •••• •••• •••• •••• ••••
On a sad NFL note: Former Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Chicago Bears defensive lineman Gaines Adams died at 26 from a heart attack in South Carolina. Apparently he had an enlarged heart, a condition all too common among big, beefy football players. There’s always a price for striving for one’s dreams and in the case of sports, it can be the ultimate price.

Football is a dangerous business.

Screwed

nospam@example.com (Tim Forkes) — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 00:01:00 -0700

Years ago, when David Letterman left NBC to get his own 11:30 p.m. show, opposite the Tonight Show, I started watching his replacement, Conan O’Brien. He wasn’t funny. His band was mostly lame. Great musicians, but no original sound. Letterman’s band, led by Paul Shaffer, like the Tonight Show band led by Doc Severinsen, had a personality. It still has that personality today since most of the members have been with Dave and Paul since the beginning.

Since Letterman’s debut at 11:30 p.m. I’ve had to flip between Leno, host of the Tonight Show after Johnny Carson retired, and Letterman’s The Late Show. Then, just over five years ago Leno announced he would retire in 2009 and hand the Tonight Show over to Conan O’Brien. Problem solved. I would no longer watch the Tonight Show.

Years ago it was a common thought Letterman would replace Johnny Carson once the Late Night King retired. NBC freaked out everyone when they announced long-time Tonight Show guest host Jay Leno would follow in Carson’s chair.

Letterman got fucked. So, when his contract expired, Letterman took up the offer from CBS and switched networks. Letterman is still funny. He got Sarah Palin all wound up when he made a joke about Sarah’s single mom daughter and Palin tried convincing everyone the joke was about her as yet to be single mom daughter.

Letterman apologized, sincerely it should be added, but Palin kept bashing Dave and even took part in a little cabal of nutcases trying to get Dave fired from his job. So, Letterman went back on the offensive and now Palin is a joke at least once a day.
 Well actually, Palin is the joke. But more on her later.

Anyway, since August 30, 1993, I’ve had to split my TV time between Letterman and Leno and now, since 2000, I don’t watch either until the Colbert Report is over at midnight. Well, since June 1, 2009 I don’t really bother with the Tonight Show, even though I did give Conan a try couple of times. He just isn’t funny.

In September 2009 NBC began it’s prime time experiment with Leno coming on at 10 p.m., before the local news. I watched it a few times since it’s pretty much just an earlier version of Leno’s Tonight Show. Leno is still funny. Most of the bits he did on the Tonight Show are seen on his early program, my favorite being “Jaywalking.”

But that all changed recently. Leno’s rating at 10 p.m. have been abysmal, due more to the fact that viewer habits at that time slot had been entrenched and people were not giving up their favorite 10 p.m. shows to watch Leno.

Add that to the Tonight Show slipping in the ratings and you have “the suits” of NBC tripping all over themselves to find a remedy. Over time, as other 10 p.m. programs finished their runs and went off the air, Leno probably would have picked up viewership, but who in TV has patience these days?

So the remedy the suits came up with was simple — and downright cruel to Conan O’Brien: Leno would do a half hour show at 11:35 and the Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien would start at 12:05.

Since it’s inception the Tonight Show’s start time has been 11:30-35 (10:30 in the Central Time Zone). For decades I watched Johnny Carson nearly every night. Before Carson there was Jack Paar and … sheesh, I’ve forgotten his name. There have been a few hosts before Carson, but it was Johnny who made the Tonight Show a brand. He was the host for 30 years? Close to it anyway. On his last Tonight Show broadcast, Bette Midler sang to him from the guest’s chair, one of the most touching moments in late night television.
 Had it been Carson’s choice, Letterman would have taken over the chair of the Tonight Show.

The promise for O’Brien, made by the suits at NBC was that he would be the host of the Tonight Show (I’m not sure how long the contract is for) at it’s regular time slot which starts at 11:35 in most time zones. O’Brien moved his family, band and entourage from New York City, where he did the Late Night Show after the Tonight Show.

Now, just over seven months into his turn as the host, the suits have decided to “change” things. Yeah, moving Jay Leno out to make way for Conan O’Brien was a big mistake, but bumping the Tonight Show and O’Brien? NBC screwed both Leno and O’Brien and now Conan is going to walk. Good for him. I may not like his humor, but he deserves better. The rumor is, he will get a late night show on FOX. They haven’t had a successful late night variety/talk show since Arsenio Hall, and that was a long, long time ago. Maybe Conan O’Brien will carry on where Hall left off.

Then there is Sarah Palin, the newest commentator on FOXNews. If anyone believes she quit her job as governor of Alaska for the good of her state has to be living in a fantasy world. Since quitting and going out as a celebrity, the faux hockey mom has made millions of dollars on her book, speaking engagements and now her deal with FOX.

The woman had one thing and one thing only in mind when she decided to quit her job—MONEY! And lots of it. Had she fulfilled her term as governor, she would have faded from the public eye and all the money she is getting now wouldn’t have been there in a year or two. Sarah Palin, like many of her fellow conservatives, is a lying fraud.

Going rogue … what bullshit! Sarah Palin has gone greedy! No harm in that, but she could at least be honest about it.

The best thing about late night television: watching Letterman use Sarah Palin as the butt of his jokes. The perfect exposition for the ass that is Palin.

Elvis!

nospam@example.com (Tim Forkes) — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 00:01:00 -0700

Friday, January 8, would have been Elvis Presley’s 75th Birthday! Eh, but he kicked the bucket, as all recall, August 16, 1977.
Or so they say!

The best line I’ve heard about Elvis “leaving the building” in the past 32 years was delivered by Tommie Lee Jones in the movie, Men In Black:
 Jay (Will Smith): “You know Elvis is dead.”
 Kay (Tommie Lee Jones): “No, Elvis is not dead. He just went home.”

Elvis Presley is an alien!

Elvis changed pop music forever. Saturday Morning some friends and I got into a short discussion about Elvis and of course it turned to the music of today. Just for the record, I like Linkin Park and System of a Down, to name just two. But what these other people, all slightly older than me, were saying were the same things being said about rock’n’roll when it was in its infancy — when Elvis ruled the airwaves: Can’t understand what the singers are singing, it’s all too sexual. I had to laugh. Music is music and as it evolves the older generations are offended by the music of youth.

Not all of us old people anyway.

There’s some Elvis on my iPod, along with vintage James Brown and Chuck Berry. Listening to Chuck right now as a matter of fact, but since this is about Elvis, let’s click on those greatest hits! But I gotta love Check Berry’s guitar playing.

With age comes wisdom they say. Don’t know if that’s necessarily true, but over the years my taste in music has become far more expansive. I wouldn’t call it eclectic, but I like everything from Bach to Alicia Keys, an interesting spread. Keys is a classically trained pianist.

But it was Elvis who made rock’n’roll what it is today: the popular music of choice. That popified country we hear now and then makes a bit of a splash, but really, rock is still the predominant music, if you consider hip-hop to be a rock’n’roll genre.

For the longest time in the 60’s, Elvis didn’t perform live and the only albums he released were the soundtracks for his mostly forgettable movies and the odd Christmas and Gospel albums. But that all changed in 1968.

Priscilla Presley, Elvis’s first wife and the executor of his estate, says Elvis would probably be singing Gospel music and doing a little preaching on the side were he still alive — or on this planet, if he is an alien.

We got our first live performance from Elvis on television when he aired that groundbreaking TV special, ELVIS! December 3, 1968. Man! He was great! Anyone who watched it that night on NBC felt the same way. This was the real Elvis, not the hokey movie character we became so familiar with in the previous seven years.
 Viva Las Vegas was pretty good though. It featured Ann-Margaret!

Elvis Aron Presley finally died alone from a drug overdose August 16, 1977, less than eight years after his big comeback special on NBC. If you remember the movie Bladerunner, there’s that fateful meeting of the replicant Roy Blatty (Rutger Hauer) with his creator, Dr. Eldon Tyrell (Joe Turkell) in which Dr. Tyrell says the most memorable line from the film: “The light that burns twice as bright burns for half as long — and you have burned so very, very brightly, Roy!”

Elvis Presley’s light flared twice as brightly as the rest of the music world and like the fictional character of Roy Blatty, Elvis lived half as long. He was but 42 years old when he died. I was off in Okinawa, Japan when Elvis died and the news was a shock. He had become the overweight character that is often ridiculously impersonated by fat guys with lamb chop sideburns and too-tight white bejeweled jump suits, but he was still the King of Rock’n’Roll.

To this day my visual memory of Elvis is from that TV Special, when he was in his prime. That’s the way I’d like to keep it.

•••• •••• •••• •••• •••• •••• •••• ••••

The other great event that occurred on January 8: my friend Danielle Richardson made her debut as a Playboy Cyber Girl in 2007. She’s pretty nice, very naughty in a not-so-harmless way and isn’t easily offended by the likes of me. Dani has actually embarrassed me on occasion!

Danielle has never been caught up in all the girly stuff of the modeling profession; she still works a day job that she loves and for which she is quite handsomely paid. In other words, Danielle is a pretty down-to-Earth person, not your typical celebrity, nude model type.

And she’s much better looking than Elvis!

Happy Birthday!

nospam@example.com (Tim Forkes) — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 17:02:00 -0700

Today I celebrate my birthday. No Monday Night Football — dang! There should be a college bowl game on, but I’ve run through the channels and all I get are game shows, Ellen DeGeneres and Dr. Phil — and he isn’t even a doctor!

Well, Ellen DeGeneres is entertaining, but I’m switching to Ed Schultz over on MSNBC! Now that I usually work on Mondays, and the rest of the week, I miss all my favorite news and opinion programs. That’s the downside of having a job: it interferes with the fun things in life.

So today I goofed off for the morning, joined some friends at noon and then ran some errands with the help of a new friend who really wanted to be of service and spend part of the day with someone. He has a nice van, we got to do my business at the V.A. offices in Mission Valley, made a run to the beach, soaked up the warm sun and ocean-filled air and then hot-footed it back to this side of town to avoid all the after work traffic.

It’s been a beautiful day so far, other than no football on TV, but spending time outside, at the beach, it really doesn’t get much better than that! Especially in January!

Originally, I lived in Wisconsin and the idea of walking at the beach in a T-shirt on January 4th was tantamount to insanity. Actually, it would be insane, unless Wisconsin was having a very unusual heat wave.

Oh yes, there are beaches in Milwaukee, WI, my favorite being Bradford Beach, right beneath the bluffs of Lake Park on Lake Michigan. I’m almost feeling nostalgic … but I also remember I can’t walk the beach in a T-Shirt on January 4th without catching the flu or pneumonia.

Ah yes! Walking at Mission and Pacific Beaches in the middle of winter wearing a T-Shirt cures any sense of nostalgia I might feel for Milwaukee. Not completely though. It’s almost impossible to find good bratwurst and kielbasa in San Diego — which might be a good thing for my diet.

Back in the day I lived close to a place in Milwaukee that made all sorts of sausages by hand: The European Sausage Factory. Man! I spent way too much time there, as my waistline will attest, but according to my brother Rick, who still resides in Milwaukee, the store no longer exists. Dang!

What I really miss about Milwaukee are my brother and friends. Too many to name, but all of them pretty special. Thanks to FaceBook, we can keep in touch. Technology ain’t so bad. Well, FaceBook can be a pain in the ass now and then and they’ve made our personal information more available to anyone who wants it — technology ain’t all that great.

So far though, this birthday has been very nice.

Later, some friends and I will be having dinner at Outback — love a good steak dinner! That will be a nice way to end a birthday! Outback has heart healthy fare … but more than likely I’ll be starting the meal with a Bloomin’ Onion! It will just go downhill from there. We’ll just keep this meal off the food log! Okay, we’ll add it, with an asterisk!

The best birthday present I’ve ever received: my brother Ken who shares this birthday, but he’s eight years younger! Back when we were little, Mom would bake a cake for me and a pie for Ken — what a way to enjoy a birthday! Of course Ken and I would have to have a piece of each! With ice cream!

This birthday won’t deliver anything quite as special, it’s doubtful any birthday to come will equal that wonderful gift, but that’s okay. Ken is a gift that keeps on giving, year-after-year! In fact, it was Ken who sent the Grateful Dead-Opoly as my Christmas gift! And he doesn’t even like the Dead!

It’s a great birthday, despite the fact that I am yet one year older. When we’re younger, like in our 20’s and even 30’s, we don’t think about getting old. Life is, for most of us, a breeze. We don’t think much about things like disease and mortality. Maybe we should. Start putting away for retirement, pay attention to the doctors and health professionals who are telling us to live better, eat healthier and get more exercise.

In March 1996 I had my first heart attack, a wakeup call if you like and was damn lucky to be waiting for a cop to give me a ticket when it happened. He immediately got on his horn and called an ambulance. Within three minutes paramedics were on the scene and less than five minutes later I was in an emergency room. The cardiologist on duty said five more minutes and I would have been dead.

So, anytime I can mark another day of life, another year of living, it’s a good thing. Who knows what tomorrow brings. It would be nice to see 55, 65, and even 75! Outlive both my father and oldest brother, neither of who lived to their 63rd birthdays.

But we don’t know. All we can do is live life as best we can, try not to regret and look and move forward — even if all that means is we get up and go to work and come home afterwards.

Thank you to everyone who sent birthday wishes on FaceBook and MySpace and Happy Birthday Ken! All the best people are born on January 4th!

Happy New Year!

nospam@example.com (Tim Forkes) — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 08:01:00 -0700

How can anyone root for a team called “The Ducks”? Oh well, don’t want to piss off the Oregon alumni … or them crazy fans of the Anaheim Mighty Ducks.

That’s a funny story line. Disney makes a movie (or two as I recall) about a guy coaching a peewee league hockey team called the Mighty Ducks. That’s actually the name of the movie, as I recall. No matter, I never saw it. Emelio Estevez stars as the unlucky guy coerced into coaching the worst peewee hockey team in the history of peewee hockey. Who knew peewee hockey had a history? Who knew there was peewee hockey?

So, Disney makes this movie, it becomes a big hit, so much so they make a sequel and — this is the great part — Disney creates a professional hockey team that gets into the National Hockey League! No shit! The Mighty Ducks of Anaheim!

The movie came out in 1992; the team became an NHL franchise in 1995 and won the Stanley Cup in 2007. In 2005 Disney sold the team to the Samueli Family, who changed the name of the team to the Anaheim Ducks.

I don’t follow hockey. Looked it all up on Wikipedia. My nephew Chris, who lived in Colorado for many years, is a big hockey fan and could probably give us all the details of every team that has ever cut the ice in the NHL. Obviously, Chris is a big Avalanche fan.

So, this isn’t about NHL hockey, although great columns and blogs are written every day about the NHL and its teams and fans. It isn’t even about the Oregon Ducks playing The Ohio State Buckeyes in the Rose Bowl, which is still on as I type.

Up to and including most of the First Quarter, I thought Ohio State was going to win this one in a walk, but it doesn’t appear so now in the Fourth Quarter. The Ducks of Oregon have a great team with a really good quarterback, Jeremiah Masoli. Sadly, I have to leave before the game is over. I’d really like to see who wins the Rose Bowl.

You know what this is really about? Welcoming in the New Year: 2010. My thought has always been, “Ain’t it great to ring in the New Year with College Football all day and night!” Now, I’m going to miss the end of one of the best Rose Bowl games in some time.

Used to be, when I was young, we had some really great bowl games on New Years Day: The Rose Bowl, The Orange Bowl, The Cotton Bowl, The Sugar Bowl, among the most notable. Of those, only the Rose Bowl and the Sugar Bowl are played on New Years Day. Thanks in part to the insanity of the BCS — the Bowl Championship Series.

Although that’s not why the Cotton Bowl Classic isn’t played on January 1st. The owners of that game just decided to play it on January 2nd, which, thankfully for them, is a Saturday this year. Could always count on an early morning game, a great early morning game, with the Cotton Bowl, now called the Cotton Bowl Classic. Officially, it’s called something else.

You see corporate sponsorship has changed the names of all but the Rose Bowl. It’s the “AT&T Cotton Bowl,” the “Tostitos Fiesta Bowl,” “FedEx Orange Bowl,” the “Allstate Sugar Bowl,” etc., etc., etc.

It’s almost funny listening to sportscasters and chatterers talking about these bowl games, stumbling to put the corporate sponsors’ names in whenever they mention the bowl game itself. Because these corporate sponsors are advertisers on just about every network that talks about sports, the rule, written or otherwise, keep the advertisers happy and use their names when talking about the bowl games.

Ever watch pro sports on TV? On certain replays and at certain points in the game, an advertiser will sponsor the feature, and the people calling the game stumble with the name when introducing the clip. Can’t think of any in particular and I’m too lazy to do the research on the Internets, but that’s almost funny — when it isn’t too annoying.

The funniest thing I heard was blurted out by none other than Brent Musberger during the Rose Bowl.

Mr. Musberger has been making weird, funny and controversial statements ever since his days as a newspaper columnist in Chicago, when he called Tommie Smith and John Carlos “black-skinned storm troopers” after the two athletes raised their fists in a Black Power salute while on the podium at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City.

Brent has been calling college football for ABC for two decades now, ever since being “dismissed by CBS when it was decided he was acquiring too much exposure and power at the former network. That’s the rumor anyway. He once got into a fistfight with Jimmy the Greek while at ABC … talk about two egos in conflict.

Anyway, the funny thing Musberger said during the Rose Bowl. Now, bowl games are generally played by teams that are not local to the area, with the occasional exception of the Rose Bowl, which, historically, features a Big 10 team against a Pac 10 team. That includes UCLA and USC, both Los Angeles area teams.

So, the people who go to bowl games take about a week out of their holiday schedules and spend thousands of dollars getting to the game and enjoying all the sights of the area before the game is played. Going to a bowl game is a huge investment for most people, especially if they’re coming from as far away as Eugene, OR and Columbus, OH.

The Rose Bowl was a close game in terms of the score. So after half time, early in the Third Quarter, we were served a view from whatever blimp was covering the game and Musberger says, and this isn’t a totally accurate quote, “You know we have a good game when you look at the parking lot and no one is leaving!”

No shit, Sherlock! The score could have been a lop-sided 30-0, either way, and no one would be leaving the game! 99% of those fans in the stands spent thousands of dollars to be there and the last thing they want to do is leave before the game is over! Maybe in the last few minutes of the game, but right after the half? Geez Brent … OMG! LOL!

New Years Day is all about college football — unless it falls on a Sunday, which is now given over to pro football, thanks to the 16-game season that’s actually 17 weeks long, thanks to every team getting a bye week during the regular season.

College football and food. My friends and I had bean soup at Dan’s house Friday Night, causing me to miss the end of the Rose Bowl. After the soup we played Wii bowling. I bowled right-handed. My left arm is still in a cast. New Years Day is about college football, food and friends and family!

But it’s really the college football I look forward to every January 1st. And the funny things we occasionally hear from the sports commentators during the games.

Happy New Year!