Words Cannot Describe It

"Words can't describe how I'm feeling." Really? Well if you're not Pablo Picasso, you'd better find some words or we'll never know what the hell is going on. How did we get to the point where when the largest events happen, great or tragic, we react with such appreciative amazement when someone says, "Words can't describe what I saw"? No words at all for it, eh? Wow, that must have been something else... We shouldn't appreciate that, we should be infuriated.

This empty, canned, meaningless phrase has suddenly become our paramount superlative. When seemingly nothing is left, people default to "can't describe it." Is it that we can't or that we won't? It's either pathetic lack of vocabulary, i.e. complete idiocy, or sheer laziness. "Why should I think of what to say? You figure it out."

People even use it in romantic terms. "Words cannot express what I'm feeling." But words just expressed that you're a verbally impotent, slack moron.

I'm going to apply for a job at Hallmark, and on my first day on the job I'm going to blow everyone's minds by creating the quintessential, universal, unstoppable predator of greeting cards, and then I'll leave them to ponder my greatness. Upon opening my card, it will read: "Words cannot describe what I'm feeling." Done. I'm out.

Mine will be the greatest selling greeting card of all time because the people who are shopping for greeting cards already have no ability to think/say/speak/write for themselves or are too lazy to even give it a shot, and they are so enamored with the "beyond words" poetic illusion which rationalizes their ineptitude that they'll scoop up my card to perpetuate the circle-of-ignorance that is strangling our country.

The typical receiver of such hogwash will close the card, hold it up against his/her chest as a tear falls away from under eye and think to themselves, "I have no real idea what that means. But at least he/she spent $2 and licked an envelope."

(Yes, I anticipate receiving no birthday cards this year now.)

With an anniversary of 9/11 coming up, I know once again I'm going to be watching important, reverent documentaries full of videotaped on-the-street interviews with people, eyewitnesses to history, who will be giving the ol' "words can't describe it" to the historic record. I would rather hear someone say, "Thing go boom," or, "I'll get back to you on that" than, "Words couldn't describe it."

Many of you know that I was a high school English teacher for several years. For some of those years I taught English as a Second Language. I realize now that after teaching some of the initial basics, "yes, no, stop, go, please, thank you, my name is..." I should have taught "Words can't describe it." It's called assimilation.

Beyond that, I spent four years of evenings teaching the Verbal half of SAT prep classes in the South Bay. Why was I wasting my time when the key to brilliance and depth would soon become "Word cannot describe what I'm thinking"?

I've hit the wall. Words cannot describe my frustration.

They Call Me Steely McBeam

If I told you that my nickname in college was "Steely McBeam," then you'd assume that I had a pretty interesting and fulfilling dating life. If I told you that my SAG professional screen name was "Steely McBeam," you'd think that I was doing fairly well in my porn career, and you'd do a Google image search as soon as you got to a computer in private.

Though I do now plan to slyly incorporate the name Steely McBeam into my most intimate conversations with the opposite sex, I will not be able to claim sole ownership of it. The Pittsburgh Steelers have introduced a new mascot, a yellow skinned, five o'clock shadowed, hard hat and flannel shirt wearing steel worker recently named by a contest winner as Steely McBeam.

The idea of a mascot has been the subject of controversy amongst Steelers fans for their entire 75 year history, as divisive there as the concept of "Reagan Democrats." Before McBeam, the Steelers had set themselves apart as a team of stark simplicity, a simple two color uniform scheme with the iconic U.S. Steel Corp. logo placed on only one side of the helmets, the other side staying fully black. Who needs all the decorations? (See the Buffalo Bills who add another stripe or stroke somewhere on the uni every year to no avail.) Helmets are for hitting the other guy in the head. There were never cheerleaders, and the previous attempt at mascotting the club in the 80's was run out of town on a barge down the Ohio. Rumor has it it's calling bingo games at a retirement home outside Louisville.

This year, to highlight the organization's 75th anniversary, they brought the mascot idea back. Kids may respond to it, as they do Barney and Weird Al Yankovich, but we adult fans are very uncomfortable with the change. Steeler football has always been about football, no playful distractions beyond Bill Cowher's domineering chinbone or spit shower of fury. Steeler Nation is the largest nationwide fan base in the NFL, often enough to make away games feel like home games. Kids love the Steelers because they dominate. They win. They play hard and look tough. They are among the few things in pop culture that have not gone cartoony or given into the infantilization of the modern era in which everything has to bring us back "to our childhoods" as if American adults are afraid to ever feel more than arm's length away from the security blankets of our toddler years or the musical mobile above our cribs.

The defenders say, "Kids like it." But I say kids need to learn to admire things that are purely for grown ups on a grown up level. They go to church and they have to sit there and shut up. No giant, stuffed smiling Jesus needed to appease them. They learn respect. They have to go to school and shut up and learn. Teachers don't put on hand puppets and squeak like Pee Wee Herman to hold their attention. (The ones that do should be shot.) They don't need to have professional football angled towards them like a Kool Aid commercial. The game is awesome enough, spectacle enough. The players are amazing enough. Look at them, those mighty Steelers, and learn to emulate their relentless, dominating, enemy crushing ways.

My fear is that kids will be asking for a Steel McBeam doll for Christmas when they should be asking for helmets and cleats. When I was a boy, every year I begged my parents to buy me a Pittsburgh Steelers uniform for Christmas. I used to play one-on-one football with a kid down the street named Tim. Much to my horror one year on the day after Christmas, he showed up to play wearing an entire Miami Dolphins uniform, the home whites in kids size, head to toe, helmet and all. He couldn't have been more pleased with himself. His father was the neighborhood dentist. All of us kids' crooked teeth had paid for that uni. And there I was, in my many layers of sweatshirts, thermal underwear and dungarees, unsafe with no head gear at all but for my red and blue hand-me-down stocking cap. But I won that day, cleverly taking advantage of the way his slightly large helmet limited his peripheral vision. I won with speed and cunning and flat out muscle. I won the Steelers way, pretty boy. And Timmy's uniform got filthy, and he got in trouble.

The following Christmas, I got a set of Steelers pajamas, gold pants and a white pullover with a Steelers helmet on the chest. Believe me, I seriously considered wearing it a top my layers of sweatshirts and pants the next day. But fate helped me make the better decision not to so as to avoid the lifetime of derision that surely would have followed that choice.

Forget the mascot, Steely McBeam, and his jaundiced skin and bibbed overalls. Why is he wearing ski pants? And Steelers fans, please stop referring to him as a coal miner. That would make no sense whatsoever. Plus, he has no lamp on his helmet and still has a glimmer of hope in his eyes as if life has not yet completely destroyed him, so he can't be a coal miner (or a lonely writer of blogs).

Well, it could be worse. We could have what the Baltimore Ravens have: > See Ravens Pride.

Cashcall, Gary Coleman and the Tiny Print

Look, the last thing I want to do is give Gary Coleman a hard time. He's been handed enough of that on his own with the kidneys and the hormones, the money with the parents thing and the not so great job placement stint as a security officer on the edge. I was a big fan as a child. I emulated him in every way on Diff'rent Strokes. I even tested out my own catch phrase for a while: "I don't know. Why don't you tell me?" My Mom hated it. Turns out that precociousness is much less precious when you're not pulling in $80,000 per episode. I voted for him for Governor of California. I cried when his blind date went bad at the end of Star Dates. I even pulled for him to win The Surreal Life Fame Game until I realized that it was Emmanuel Lewis and that his heart wasn't really into winning, he was a compromiser, and his attempted manipulations were obvious and weak. Then the SR Fame Game for me became all about Andrea Lowell for diff'rent strokes altogether.

But all kidneys aside, Gary Coleman is best known for being the victim of birth circumstance with the apparent parental squandering of his fortune. He'd earned over $7 million while starring on the show and made over $17 million from all his work during that period (1978-1986). Yet somehow, some way, every penny of that got recirculated into society, and Gary never got to enjoy it for the years beyond when he was enjoying it at least a little bit.

So his story became one of the former child star seeking out his rebound, still loved and adored in his adult years, but not paid back for the joy that he gives. He's taken seemingly every job that has come along: music videos, cameos in TV movies and low rent TV commercials. In walks Cashcall.

Actually, it was the other way around. Gary walked into the Cashcall offices. As the story goes, when he went to their offices to close the loan he had taken out with them, he was introduced to the company's boss who encouraged Gary to pay off his loan by appearing in Cashcall ads.

What he should have said was, "What'chu talkin' 'bout, Cashcall?" But instead he took the deal, and now in the spots he proudly proclaims, "Cashcall helped me. They can help you too... Pay your bills on time and everyone will love you." Alas, it's all about being loved, especially by Cashcall.

One of the best things about DVR technology is that you can pause the TV screen at any time. I started doing this during shows like the FBI Files and Forensic Files. Whenever they show someone's suicide note, hand written or signed confession on screen with just some parts highlighted, I pause it and read the entire thing for myself. It's great for the History channel, too, civil war letters, Stalinist propoganda articles, secret Nazi documents and such. Then I started doing it with commercials, things like car leases that seem too good to be true. You pause it, and you can read how high the initial down payments are supposed to be. (Plymouth has gone one step ahead of me. They have an extremely suspicious lease offer of $99/month on their PT Cruiser. Not that I'd ever lease one because I'm not 20 years old, a woman, and a big fan of Trading Spaces reruns. But I paused it, and it says, "See our website for details." Hmmm. That should be against the law - a sales two-stepper.)

And so to the DVR pause on the Coleman Cashcall ads. I'd never seen a screen so filled with such tiny print. Nothing good ever needs to written on such nanoscale.

Here's what Cashcall and Coleman are offering via tiny text: "The APR for a typical loan of $2,600 is 99.25% with 42 monthly payments of $216.55..." Those payments add up $9,095.10 to pay back a loan of $2,600. Over three and a half years, that's paying back three and a half times the amount you borrowed. 99.25%!!!!! These rates are even brazenly published right on their website. > See for yourself.

I have damned many a bank that offers credit cards at a mere 22.9% APR. Now I recognize their magnanimous generosity and good will.

I know the story. Anyone who ends up at the Cashcall window is not just simply trying to pay off their one, single, small debt. They are people who've been overwhelmed with debt, cannot get assistance from any reputable banking institution anymore, and are just trying to get the worst of the creditors (like the IRS) off of their backs. So they borrow from Bealzebob to pay Paul. Still have that twinge of sympathy for the adorable Gary Coleman? It's sympathy for the devil's pudgy cheeked surrogate.

If you've ever been majorly in debt, as I have, then you know how difficult it is. You start to juggle the creditors with a Worst-First List. You look for the quick fix wherever you can get it. The difficult but appropriate thing to do is to make a long term plan and face the facts that a lot will have to be sacrificed until you can climb all the way out. A lot. I suffered through four years of the worst M-F job (M-F not necessarily meaning Monday thru Friday) of my life to get myself out debt a few years back. Many of you know, I had to resist quitting several times a day, every single day. It was a harrowing, dark period of my life which scarred me with bitterness and lack of pity. But I got out of debt. The hardest thing about it is that to make the large payments on a realistic payoff plan, you have to pre-calculate, plan it out and then pay over almost every penny that you earn all the way until you are through, which means no spending money ever, and certainly no savings or safety.

Then I got back to zero and an all new struggle against the great costs of living began. But it's better than signing any paper that has a 99.25% APR. Those people and their spokespersons are not out there to help you. In fact, the reality is, no one is - especially not people on TV. I just wish you hadn't done it, Gary.

p.s. Don't call me for help, people. I have no money.

Joseph Finder Discovers his Genius

"The funniest smart guy in Hollywood... Really, really funny: I'm a huge fan." - Joseph Finder, New York Times best selling author
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Many of you know that my favorite book last year was, hands down, Joseph Finder's "Company Man." I've passed it around amongst some friends all of whom loved it and left me with a paperback as torn and tattered as the last 18 months of the Bush presidency. His books are fiction, action thrillers. Recently they've been set in the corporate world. His protagonists always have a great sense of humor, wry and real, about themselves and the people around them. Feeling so moved, I'd penned similar words of admiration on my MySpace page and, apparently, Mr. Finder spends as much time Googling himself as the rest of us do, and he found it, and lo and behold, one day I had a Friend Request from the respected Mr. Joseph Finder himself.

Upon receipt, I found myself skeptical (though you know of my deep distrust of skeptics). Is Joseph Finder really on MySpace, or is this a "fan page?" Is this some sort of hidden porn spam trying to branch out their final frontier - the fiction reading, quasi-intelligentsia set? I took a chance and wrote him saying that, if it is really him, I think he's brilliant, and I've enjoyed his books immensely, and if it is not him, then you really have a lot of time on your hands as a fan.

In response to that, Mr. Finder checked out my comedy website and wrote me a very wonderful email about my stand-up work. He is now, in his words, "a fan." And by extension, you, by being here, are in the same club with that Yale/Harvard educated, world traveled best-selling author. Doesn't that make you feel better about yourself?

Plus, he's allowing me to use some of his kind words for my publicity. I offered him the same in return, but how much can I help him?: "Finder's novels are real good." - Richard Lucas, petulant nobody. I don't think so. He is a gentleman and a scholar. And on top of that, he said that he's send me an autographed hard copy of "Company Man" to replace my worn out paperback.

I received the book in just a few days, as you see in the above photo. It goes right up on the shelf of treasured signed books which now numbers two, the other being Adam West's "Back to the Batcave." Adam West's book is tainted though because he hit on my date while he signed it. That's what you get for buying an Adam West book at a comic book store and then standing in line for an autograph - even he resents you as a pasty faced dork. My date was a graphic artist in package design. West, boldly (in my judgement impolitely) ignoring me, asked her what she did for a living, and she giddily replied, "Oh me? I'm a package designer..." Without skipping a beat, an actor's breath already drawn for retort, West came back in an instant through his warm, smooth smile saying, "Well, you're quite a package yourself." Quite a package yourself. Brilliant... and humiliating. Sexy... and emasculating.

And On top of it, his book wasn't very good. Who really cares about the back story of the Batman TV show? Well, ok it's interesting. Did you know that Adam West thought that the hood of the Batman costume was making his hair thin out? True. Fascinating... But believe me, you'd care less if he hit on your date. I do. Did. Do.

More to the point. Joseph Finder is great. He knows brilliance when he hears it - as do you, my good friends. If it's been a while, go to my website and check out the audio clips. Lots of fun there. And for Joseph Finder, get his books. Read 'em. I just finished "Killer Instinct," and it's a blast.

Kool-Aid Drinkers Unite!

This week the maker of Kool-Aid announced that it would stop advertising its product to children during children's television programming, effectively banishing itself to the Island of Elba to while away with the likes of Marlboro, Jack Daniel's and Girls Gone Wild dvd's. They say that this is to encourage better nutrition. A curious, tacit admission of guilt in aiding the current child obesity and diabetes crisis for a product that has been on the market for over 80 years, long before the childhood obesity was cool. The product comes unsweetened. It's just a powdered soft drink concentrate. It's the consumer that adds the sugar. Sugar substitutes and have been around since 1879, and the ones that don't cause cancer since 1979. Is it the children who are doing themselves harm?

Kool-Aid is not going to make itself disappear. What I'm not sure about is where Kool-Aid will advertise now? With the state of television today, what programming is not aimed at kids? Maybe The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer?: "Major funding for this program has been provided by The Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, Kool-Aid, and viewers like you." Maybe there could be some smart product placement in Showtime's "Weeds." That adult market would certainly loves a nice sip of Kool-Aid along with a good snack. This era's prolonged presidential election cycle offers a good opportunity, too because kids under 18 can't even vote. They certainly won't be watching all the debates. And Kool-Aid would be a perfect political sponsor since "Drinking the Kool-Aid" has become the political cliché of the millennium. People who voted for Bill Clinton's re-election in the face of all the scandals were called "Clinton Kool-Aid Drinkers" because they were willing to sacrifice themselves (their votes) for the greater cause. Today, Bush-ies are considered "Kool-Aid Drinkers" because they will believe anything that the the administration coughs out about the War on Terror. Actually, anyone who believes in anything strongly is considered a "Kool-Aid Drinker" by the opposition.

"Kool-Aid drinkers" a bad thing? But it's sweet, fun and refreshing? It's all Jim Jones's fault. Now, cause of him, it's synonymous with poison. You gonna advertise that to kids? If Jones had just left well enough alone, kept his Peoples Temple cult in the Bay Area and not moved them to Guyana and talked them into group suicide by drinking cyanide laced Koo-Aid with his pscychological manipulation, his mesmerizing speeches and his slick sunglasses, everything would be fine. He not only ruined Kool-Aid, but now no one trusts a preacher who wears gradient sunglasses at the pulpit anymore either. (I'll address the loss of gradient sunglasses in an upcoming blog.)

Who here believes that Kool-Aid is going to stop advertising to kids? But more importantly, why should they? Kool-Aid is a powdered mix that has to be purchased, then mixed in a 2 quart pitcher with one or two cups of sugar, water added and chilled. Is that what kids are doing with their money and their time? Kids are getting fatter, younger, but it's not from stirring Kool-Aid. We had it as kids. We loved it. It gave us instant heartburn and brain punch of adrenaline, it took too long to chill, and we loved it. I was a grape man. I was also in charge of sugar, and I was known to be quite generous. It could even be eaten straight from the packet. On the swim team, kids would bring several packs and eat the powder as an "energy boost" right before a race as if any 8 year old needs that - a precursor of steroid abuse, I suppose, but few of us ended up obese or in rehab. Of course, we were all swimming, which is exercise, which is the basic difference between kids of then and kids of now.

In general Kool-Aid has about 21 grams of sugar per serving. A lot, yes, but no more than most soft drinks, chocolate milk, even orange juice. We didn't have nearly the soft drink options that kids have today. We just had a bit more body motion involvement in our daily lives. Everything in moderation, except good parenting.

As if we didn't know that Kool-Aid wasn't "good for us." Look at the original Kool-Aid man. He's not exactly slim. He's so fat that he couldn't get through a normal doorway, he had to smash through the walls, menacing unsuspecting children with his elephant walk, his sweaty bodice and the tragi-clown permanent smile, all the while yelling, "Oh yeah!!" One wonders if some day Dateline's Chris Hanson won't step out from the pantry saying, "I'd like you to take a seat, oc-koolio-aid69. May I ask you what you're doing here, sir?" I don't trust people who smile all the time. Just once I want to see the Kool-Aid man sitting on a park bench, elbow on his knee, chin resting on a hand, pondering life's limitations.
The new image is a bit slimmed down with slightly longer, thinner legs. The only signs of excess might be the triple chin. And thank goodness he's finally wearing clothes/pants to cover up what now must be supposed as genitalia (though the Hawaiian shirt is pushing the good times a little hard for me). Are we really looking to the Kool-Aid cartoon guy as a role model for body image? The walking, talking, pouring pitcher on TV for a few seconds every Saturday morning? If he has that much influence, then the Jim Jones of the future is going to have a much easier time getting a lot more than 900 people to join his cult.

What you may not know is that Kool-Aid has other uses as well. That may be their new angle. According to fans, you can dye clothes with it, dye yard for knitting, dye your hair - especially blondes. You can tint wooden frames, remove rust and chlorine stains, even remove hard water stains and gunk by running it through your dishwasher. Bad for kids? Unless you love having hard water stains and plain looking wooden frames around your pictures it is.

Below: dwb, a rabid Kool-Aid fan, a "Kool-Aid Kool-Aid Drinker" if you will, offers Kool-Aid keyboard art that looks like an old fashioned telephone. Also, a passionate girl with something to say that no one understands:

I don't know why I opened your Kool-Aid, and I don't know how I possibly couldn't have known the flava unless I was blind, olfactory-challenged and my taste buds had been fried from years of licking the spoon.

Squirrels' Nuts Sacked

I guess there is no War on Terror, no healthcare crisis, no homeless problems, no traffic problems, and no impending planetary death sauna because, according to the L.A. Times, the City of Santa Monica is now giving out free birth control - to squirrels. What's that? To humans who choose hormonal prudence over unwanted pregnancy? No, to squirrels who don't.

There's a squirrel overpopulation issue in beautiful, beach front Palisades Park. Note: there's also a homeless overpopulation problem there, but no mention of that in the article. In fact, the squirrel housing issue has been an official one since 1998, and the city has been fined for it 5 times. What happens to you or me when we're fined by the state FIVE times? We're thrown in jail and forced to watch TWINS repeatedly until we pay our dues. But for the City of Santa Monica, it has only opened the window to a near decade-long, expensive social engineering experiment on squirrels. And squirrels are rodents. Officially they are. They may be cuter than rats and some mice, but if 1,000 of them were running at you after you finished shopping at Urban Outfitters on the Promenade, you'd want them dead. So... What to do... What to do... Hmmm... Too many squirrels living in the park. Hard to figure this one out, huh? Well, the minds-in-power that be have finally decided to capture each squirrel and inject them with an immuno-contraceptive vaccine, then set them free - back in Palisades Park - to enjoy their non-reproductive, free wheeling lifestyles. Eventually - eventually - the public will see the benefits when the new non-birth rate kicks in with fewer baby squirrels. What happens when the rest of the Southern California squirrel population finds out that it's a veritable Caligula at Palisades Park? I don't know. My guess is more horny squirrels moving in. Heck, if it's that much fun, I just might move in.

The city says it only costs $10-$20 per injection. But of course that doesn't account for all the time coming up with the plan, the dudes who will be out there catching the squirrels, transporting them in limos, housing them in suites at Shutters/Santa Monica and then monitoring the results, plus the cost of losing what good, productive things might have been debated and decided over that time.

Were there alternatives to the birth control plan? They did try other things. Oh, how they tried. They handed out free condoms. Tiny squirrel condoms, but they were summarily rejected for lack of sensation. Then the city went dark hearted. Santa Monica tried to euthanize the squirrels Soilent-Green-style. But waiting for the squirrels to show the classic signs of old age such as sitting at an intersection when the light turns green, watching Matlock reruns on KDOC or purchasing buttermilk at Ralph's took too long. And the squirrels were savvy. They started a Palisades Park-wide diet and fitness plan to stave off the ravages of old age. Then the city actually tried gassing them, but they had a really hard time getting them on those tiny little trains. Well, they got them on the trains easily enough, but when they told them they could leave their bags behind, all the squirrels bolted. Plus, the squirrels had actual human protesters defending their rights to live and screw and generally be a nuisance on their public patch of some of the most expensive real estate in the nation. They have had ongoing squirrel educational seminars teaching the values of abstinence, but the emboldened squirrels were actually screwing DURING the classes. Hey, when an animal by instinct carries nuts in its mouth, then you know it's gonna screw whenever it wants.

The birth control vaccination plan, the city says, should be about 66% effective. I guess those are winning enough odds for Vegas, so it should be satisfying enough for taxpayers. And, of course, we will have absolutely no way to ever find out if that ends up to be correct. Relocating the squirrels and then setting up some sort of repellant around the park, apparently, is out of the question. What squirrel could possibly live happily ever after having to slum it after being so accustomed to the views, the lifestyle and all the advantages of beautiful Palisades Park? So I propose a can't-miss solution: legalize squirrel marriage. The ceremony and paperwork could be free of charge. Make it legal once and for all because once they're married, the sex is definitely over.

Outlawing Idiocy

Recently some halfwit stepped in front of a bus somewhere in New York City and got creamed like Britney Spears' career when she shaved her head. (Article) I don't care where in New York, or when, or why. With all due respect to most dead, I don't even care who. What matters is that some bonehead, nanny legislator in the NY State Senate has overreacted and wants to outlaw the wearing of headphones while crossing the street. He calls it "iPod Oblivion." This was the CSI conclusion? They found headphones near the ears of the victim, probably still playing some Phil Collins solo effort, and deduced that the mild distraction of rhythmic sounds created such a sense of mind numb oblivion that it overpowered the use of all other senses - LIKE SIGHT - that all the mechanics necessary for personal safety were rendered useless... useless - even though these headphones allow ambient sound to come through, sounds like that of a roaring bus engine or even people shouting, "HEY, DON'T STEP IN FRONT OF THAT BUS, ASSHOLE!"

Now getting flattened by a bus can be serious business. I remember seeing a pigeon get run over by a bus wheel when I was a in the sixth grade. The bus was rolling away slowly from a stop at Public Square in Wilkes-Barre, and the pigeon didn't move out of the way because there were breadcrumbs still before him. It could have been a set up. Nonetheless, it made a popping sound like a cork from a champagne bottle, but it wasn't very cheery. I knew then that I really never wanted to get run over by anything, let alone a city bus.

As for people, I suppose no one wants to spend more city money cleaning blood and bone off of the windshields of the city's mass transit fleet. And without a doubt, killing pedestrians throws the riders' schedules way off. In olden times, they attached cow catchers onto the fronts of locomotives so that the engineers wouldn't have to be bothered with the carcasses of clueless cows. But today, rather than understanding that some people are simply idiots bound to meet the face of oncoming traffic because crossing demands the basic skills set of a 6 year old, the state senator chooses to punish everyone.

Idiocy case-in-point: You've often heard me refer to my old boss, well he always use to leave us with last minute instructions whenever he left the building, and he'd preface his to-do list with the phrase, "In case I get hit by a bus..." He was an idiot, but he was at least charmingly self-aware enough to understand that his chances of stepping in front of the slow moving metro were higher than the rest of ours. (At first we'd say, "How would he get hit by a bus?" But after getting to know him over the years, we saw it as an evolutionary inevitability.) And now no one in the iPod generation can wear headphones while crossing the street. Walk a block listening to Phil Collins, then headphones off your head for crossing the street. Walk the next block listening to Genesis, then headphones off while crossing the street. Not just volume down, but off of your head so that the Police can easily identify you as a law-abider rather than a dirty law-breaker / destroyer of social structure.

I'm a runner. I vowed years ago never to pay for a gym membership, and to this day I never have. I don't like the idea of sitting in someone else's ass sweat on the lat pulldown machine, but there are other reasons, too, like the ridiculously high fees, but I digress. When I run, I listen to music. It gives me a sense of freedom and pleasure which counteracts the merciless destruction of my dreams that is daily life. My running years go back to the original Sony Walkman. I won one the very first year that they came out by getting the most pledges in a swim-a-thon. (How I long for those days when I gave a crap...) It was a cassette player with buttons for Play, Stop, Forward and Reverse. In those days, we listened to whatever song was next, and we liked it. On a longer run, I would just flip the tape over and over. I've carried every incarnation of the Walkman in my left hand on every run ever since. Now, finally, I'm enjoying my first hands free year with the new iPod shuffle/clip.

On my run the other night I wondered what it would be like to be forced by law to take off my headphones at every intersection in honor of the idiots of this world and to spend the rest of my life fearing the police at every crosswalk. I wasn't real pleased with it. For one thing, many of you know that my deepest personal fear is being wrongly accused of something and then thrown in jail an innocent man. No one believes anything I say in the real world, let alone my pleas of injustice with the shadows of prison bars fallen across my face. Worse might be tallying up too many headphone ticket fines and getting thrown in jail. I don't think I'd earn much "respect" from other inmates "on the inside" for that. I'd then have to earn their friendship the hard way, and that's why it's my worst fear.

This, I realize, could be my Nathan Hale moment. They can't outlaw idiocy and make the rest of us live lives in total "safety" devoid of pleasure. Yes, I'm referring to many, many laws here. Adults should be able to enjoy most anything they want in privacy and in public if it doesn't lead to immediate and necessary danger to others and or their children. Incredibly restrictive drug laws are one reason why our prison system is so terribly overcrowded. Politically, I know that no candidate will ever run on an "Increased Personal Pleasure" platform, so it's up to us to draw the nanny-line ourselves. Metaphorically, as long as buses run, people will step in front of them with or without headphones. In Pittsburgh, the bus lanes on Fifth Avenue run against traffic. When I lived there in college, every year a knucklehead or two would step right into the bus lane and be vaporized courtesy of their own cluelessness and a Port Authority bus. Just leaves an open seat for someone else heading to Shadyside.

I learned how to cross the street when I was in the first grade. My Dad used to hold my hand leading me to the school bus stop at the corner of Main and Beaumont Streets. One day, he changed to guiding me with his hand gently on my shoulder blade, then eventually no hand at all, and soon I went on my own. Since then, I've borne the responsibility of not getting hit by oncoming traffic all by myself. So far, so good. But if I did get hit by a bus and lived to hear about it, my old man would have been the first one at my bedside calling me a "Damned Idiot." Whenever any of us did something stupid like getting our bike stolen or falling off the roof of the shed, Dad would call us Damned Idiots and then mutter the same word over and over all afternoon, "Carelessness.... Carelessness..." It was never pleasant, nor very sympathetic, but about that aspect of our behaviour he was never wrong.

We as a society have to understand and accept that some people will get hit by buses. Do we really want these people around anyhow? If the bus doesn't get them then they're more likely to step in front of your car causing you a larger headache than listening to Rachel Ray scream about cooking tomatoes. This really is a favor to society, not a problem. And it may be the best use of city buses since, at least here in Los Angeles, they are more of a traffic problem than a solution. (I'll be tackling that concept later.)

• John Cougar Sellencamp

Response to a friend's indignation over John Cougar Sellencamp's "This Is Our Country" use in Chevy commercials:

The corporations have captured the arts and the rest if us as well. When Andy Warhol immortalized the Campbell's Soup can (one of the most basic food stocks in the market), he inititated an elevation of the simple everyday object as something iconic (today we have Paris Hilton), and we bought it. Maybe out of familiarity, recognition or comfort. Maybe because artistically it offered no challenge at all and therefore became palatable to a lazy culture. Maybe we revere Campbell's' decades of dominance over every other soup company that has tried to market a tomato soup. We just like success. It reflected us in the most simple of ways and was aesthetically as easy to love as condensed soup is to heat up in the microwave. Either that, or Warhol recognized that this was already happening to our declining art culture, and he simply and with genius expressed it through lithography.

And now all art is a Campbell's soup can. It had better be, or it won't get seen or heard or published. What on earth is The Surreal Life or American Idol or The Apprentice or Rob & Amber: Against the Odds or any of the hyper-edited reality tv shows? It's about money, marketing to a mass, finding a lowest common denominator. What we have to decide, as artists, is: what money is good and what money is bad, or does it matter all? Is Clay Akin's money from 2005 any better or worse than Bob Dylan's from 1968? Is an idea of "artistic integrity" something to be admired or something to be scoffed at as the prattling nonsense of bitter, dying poor people who used it as an excuse for why they never made money selling their songs or paintings or poetry. If we can put integrity out to pasture, then absolutely every aspect of life will get easier to accept. Maybe one can take "bad money" and make it "good?" Can one earn "good money" for themselves while being part of a campaign that helps a conglomerate earn "bad money?"

I read an article in Rolling Stone featuring the rationalizations of bands that sell their music for commercials and campaigns. Led Zeppelin (Cadillac) said it was the "only way to get thier music heard by a new generation." Is Led Zeppelin music really hard to find? Does attaching 8 seconds of "Rock and Roll" to a Cadillac commercial make a younger generation interested? It might make them interested in buying Cadillacs. I guess being played every other song on 95.5 and 93.1 in L.A. doesn't give Led Zeppelin enough chance to get heard. I have satellite radio. You can't scroll through the ROCK menu without seeing that Led Zeppelin is being played somewhere at any given time. And by the way, their songs were recorded 30 years ago. Is it at all possible that perhaps the money train would slow down a bit on those songs? Is it absolutely necessary that they continue making fresh money decade after decade after decade? If so, then why? Because money is good. But is all money good? Does it matter to differentiate?

Younger bands use the same logic as if there is no other way possible to get people to hear their music than to let some giant corporation use it to push their product whatever that may be. An Oasis song, "All Around the World," is the jingle for AT&T. I own that album, and I sweat with shame every time it comes around on shuffle. You can't get a much larger monopoly than AT&T. Here in Los Angeles, AT&T just bought out Cingular after Cingular had swallowed up SBC which had only recently taken over PacBell, and the first thing that AT&T sent me in the mail was a notice that basic rates were going up. Of course. And Oasis wears AT&T on their sleeve because AT&T is keeping a nine year old - long since dead! - song alive and thriving. Can you image if someone actually saw an AT&T ad and then said to themselves, "Wow, that jingle, "All Around the World," is really awesome. I wonder who that is?" and then ran out to buy the cd? "I love that AT&T song!!" My brain just punched my skull.

All irony aside, The Postal Service sold their song "Such Great Heights" to UPS. Too bad they didn't just name their band United Parcel Service in the first place.

I even caught myself suckered by it the other day. I was shopping, and I heard "Remind Me" by Röyksopp. That's the song used in the Geico caveman commercial in which the caveman is on the moving walkway at the airport. I love the caveman ads, but I had no idea what that song was. (I ignorantly thought it was a soundtrack written for the ad.) I found myself smiling and thinking - not "I love this song" - but, "I love those Geico caveman ads. Dey funny. Silly metro-caveman. Maybe I'll switch to Geico." Could I now buy the Röyksopp album and listen to that song in all seriousness with any appreciation of it's original intention? Could I play it at a party (were I ever to actually throw one) without the guests thinking, "Dude's playin' the Geico song at his lame-ass party. He's a lame-ass. Why are we here? Oh, he always has lots of J.D., that's right."

SIDENOTE: a quote from a blog about the Geico commercial actors: "They remind me of Vincent D’Onofrio (Law & Order: Criminal Intent) and Val Kilmer. They were in The Salton Sea together." Ok...

There's even a web site called whatsthatcalled.com from which you can search via a pulldown menu a list of major companies and corporations to get the details about the artist's soul which they'd purchased and which exact song they'd pillaged.

Some mark the musical culture downshift at 1985 when Burger King used the original recording of Aretha Franklin's "Freeway of Love" or two years later when Nike used The Beatles' "Revolution" for a sneaker.

Today, when new artists write songs, they are also dreaming of hitting a commercial jingle jackpot. And when they do, there is no cultural consequence for the sell out. Well, the culture pays indeed. What I mean to say that the artists suffer no criticism for the sell off.

If Chevy makes some environmentally unsound cars, isn't that "bad?" Making one or two cars that are environmentally okay (barely) doesn't counterbalance the damage that the other vehicles do, does it? You can't abuse one child, but consider yourself "good" person because you were very nice to the other kids, right? Is O.J. an okay guy because he managed not to kill all but just two of the people he'd met in his entire life. That's not a bad record when you think about it. (I just can't let the O.J. thing go.)

As an actor, what will I do if I get a major commercial booking from a Chevy pick-up truck ad? Would I consider not taking it - even for a second? Not a chance! If I get a role in a tv show, do I check out the environmental records of all advertisers that sponsor the show, the network that owns the show, the charitable records of the producers who put out the show and pay my check? Of course not. I need to work! I want the work! I kiss the ring of all involved. Worst of all - what if my first commercial is for my most hated enemy - Time/Warner Cable??? I guess we say to ourselves, "Well, I've got to make money some how, some way before I can do the "right thing." Isn't that the exact same rational that John Cougar Sellencamp uses when he decides that he needs Chevy to sponsor his tour or else he can't travel in the luxurious tour bus and be shuttled in private jets and limousines from arena to arena? That no one will hear his pedantic, oversimplified, crappy, cliché-ridden, nursery rhymes unless one gets featured in a TV commercial? Well... then he contributes some time to charitable organizations and sings some songs for free for some farmers and everything's right again. Will he perform at Al Gore's Global Warming concert? Will he sing his Chevrolet/USA song? Will the throngs cheer?

I guess I'm just upset because I haven't had the chance to sell out big time yet. I want to sell out real bad. I'd sell this lousy blog for $5 (exaggerated offer not legally binding). And as far as Chevy, I say, "Go Chevy!! I love you, Chevrolet. I really do."

In fact, I'm going to work something out that Chevy might like into my next set. Here goes:
"Hey, how's everybody doing tonight?... Anybody here, like, drive a car?" Audience reacts with enthusiastic "Yeah, I do! I drive!!" and such. I've found something with which they relate.
"Yeah, I drive a car, too. And I'm a good driver... because I'm not Asian." Peels of laughter at the dead-horse racial slur.
"But seriously... when I drive, I'm on a mission, Baby. Stay the hell out of my way." Audience laughs like school children watching monkeys screw at the Zoo.
"I drive a Chevy truck because I like to guzzle gas like Rosie O'Donnell suckin' on a Shamrock shake!" Audience members punch each other in the ear drum to stop from laughing so hard at my simplistic fat-person-jab.
"Chevy Trucks rock! Go USA!" Audience goes back to ticket counter to insist on paying double for the show that is so damned awesome - and American.

Later, Chevy calls to bottle my magic.

Opinions are like assholes, but at least assholes have a function™. There's a very big difference between criticism and action. But hypocrisy is a human element. I just want the opportunity to be hypocritical. After I count the money, I'll get back to you.

• Why Can't We Hire Keira Knightley?

21 year old actress Keira Knightley (all three “Pirates of the Caribbean“’s) has announced that she’s taking time off to “get her life back.” Her life, I figure, must be something other than “working” while being tremendously wealthy and famous. It has always been her instinct, she says, to take every single acting role that came along for fear that there never would be another to follow. Very true to life for anyone in Hollywood. But I do wonder in what period of her life she has experienced such fearful downtime to substantiate that restless work ethic? She is phenomenally beautiful, a genetic masterpiece at a cross between Winona Ryder and Natalie Portman, and has worked consistently since she was 8 years old. If she is insecure about work, then how the hell am I supposed to feel about my virtual non-existence, my almost science-fiction-worthy lack of opportunity in Hollywood against which I have to beg and fight and scratch in every creative (and sometimes shameful) way possible? Even stooping to the level of writing a blog…

Keira says that if by taking this time off she ends up “at the back of the line,” then so be it. Keira Knightley is not in any “line” except for the Can-we-get-Keira-Knightley? line. As if controlling the wrinkle in time - even if she’s at the back of that line, she’s still at the front of that line.

I don’t begrudge anyone in Hollywood taking time off. But when you have gotten to the level of success that you can choose the time off rather than have those painful stretches of non-employment choosing you (or being socially forced into Rehab), then I resent your PR manager feeding the story to the networks and magazines as if you may be sacrificing something. For most of the world, “time off” is one or two weeks annual vacation approved resentfully by upper management with piles of work waiting for you the second that you return from your stealing-time-from-the-company-week (and we’d appreciate if you’d check your email twice daily). That’s during a career which is usually spiced up with at least a couple of stinging layoffs.

At 21 - rich, famous, and beautiful with a lifetime of almost incalculable residuals to come, Keira can safely “get her life back” for the next 70 years or so and never have to furrow her her wonderfully symmetric, lusciously think eyebrows with worry. Yes, I like thick-ish, bold eyebrows. I don’t know why Pam Anderson and the like shave theirs down to the thinness of a strand of DNA when strong eyebrows like Keira’s add so much contrast and interest to the facial structure. But I digress and reveal personal weakness. She got me. She’s in my mind’s eye even when she’s taking time off to get her life back. Darn it. I want my life back, but I just can’t get the time off.

• The Sun Also Rises... No It Doesn't

I don’t get philosophical when I’m in pain. I get pissed and then depressed. I’ve learned that I am neither a lover nor a fighter. I just bitch and moan until those around me can’t stand it anymore, and then I bitch and moan to myself. This year’s season for the Pittsburgh Steelers (8-8) has left me in a most wretched state of helpless confusion mixed with the kind of blind fury which I fear can only be ended by driving my motorcycle straight into the front end of an oncoming Chrysler New Yorker. If only I were dumb enough to ride a motorcycle. This isn’t just about loss in the sports/lack-of-victories sense. It’s about abandonment. Last summer, when Ben got in his accident just months after winning the Superbowl, I thought that everything that I knew and loved had been taken away. We Steeler fans had to love through several weeks of “Thank God he’s alive” all the while facing the realization that we may need to take giant steps backwards in the Quarterback arena. And backwards is a scary thing for Steeler fans. After Terry Bradsaw, we had suffered through decades of sub-par QB’ who couldn’t close the deal even when they were witting on top of some of the best defenses in the NFL. Hello - Kordell Stewart anybody? Tommy Maddox? Tommy’s the guy who said, “The football is funny - it’s round, but it’s pointy too.” Is that Steeler talk? (Actually he never said that. I only say that every time I see his face on TV because his high pitched voice, his lack of chin structure and his propensity to throw interceptions turned me into an angry, bitter man.) After Ben’s accident. I wondered why I ever had faith in anything. All is fleeting. No one stays. No love lasts. Like George in “Of Mice and Men,” everything that I adore just dies in my hands or shoots me in the back of the head while telling me that The Steelers can win Superbowls - “They can?” “Yes, Richard… They can…” Bam!! Bam!! (For those who think I should be happy that The Steelers at least won in 2006 - you’re nuts! Let’s see how much you want to see your team lose just because they may have won a previous championship. You want your team to win every game, always, and all other teams in the league to lose every game, every week. I don’t see any Patri-rots fans apologizing because they’re in the AFC championship game AGAIN.)

But I was talking about abandonment and how it bookended this season for Pittsburgh. First Ben, then Bill Cowher. In this age of professional sports, teams trading players too much and too quickly has killed the spirits of the fans. Fans now drown in cynicism looking for trades or replacements as soon as a ball is dropped or a pass is underthrown. There’s no such thing as loyalty anymore. Nowhere but in Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh still prides itself on building from the draft, not from trades, and we have enjoyed just two coaches for the last 38 years. A few years ago, when the Steelers were in a 6-8 season, The Rooneys announced that Bill Cowher would have the position there for life is he wanted it. That’s uncanny loyalty, and it paid off with a great record and an eventual Superbowl victory. Chuck Noll and Bill Cowher have been all that I’ve know for my life as a Steeler fan. And loyalty has been rewarded. We’ve not had to endure the coaching controversies, the merry-go-round of the Bill Parcells and the Tom Coughlins and all the other coaches who can’t maintain any working relationship with anybody for more than three seasons. Nick Saban, of course, has now made it even worse. No one trusts anybody and no one’s word is worth anything. Well, Coach Cowher did put the team on notice when he didn’t sign an extension before the season. And then we all saw it in his eyes during the year. Everything that we loved about Coach Cowher (and that detractors hated) his fire, his frustration, his chin - they were all gone. Somehow, someone had gotten into his head and gotten him to change - to quit on the game. Then he left the Steelers. Watching him in his press conference (with his needing to “spend more time with his family” crap) in that mutli-colred sweater made it even harder to see him go. Horrible fashion like that is part of the Pittsburgh tradition. He’s not going to get away with sweaters like that anywhere else. But the family stuff? None of us buy it. Not that he doesn’t miss his family and have regrets about how much time football has taken from his family life thus far - but come next year when he’s being offered $8 million plus to coach somewhere else, he’ll be able to buy family time at a great rate and put it in a tidy little IRA somewhere.

Those of us working dogs will never fully understand. None of us will have the opportunity to consider retiring at 49 years old. To pass up a multi-million dollar job in an organization (and fan-base) that loves him. In the end, I hope it is worth it for Coach Cowher because the NFL he’s going to re-enter in 2008 is a very different generation which wields a mighty sword and doesn’t tolerate losing. “Building a team” is given one year, not three or four, and quarterback controversies are a common as Eli Manning’s sad face.

And now this weekend, I have to watch The Colts against The Patri-rots in the AFC a self-congratulatroy malaise after wining his first Superbowl. Now he could be looking at number 4 in 6 years because of it. It leaves me with nothing but burning pain in my chest and tears if stinging black and gold on my cheek.

I suppose tat this illustrates the transitory nature of life events and situations - even in Pittsburgh

The Buddha himself said once: -
When faced with all the ups and downs of life,
Still the mind remains unshaken,
Not lamenting, not generating defilements, always feeling secure,
This is the greatest happiness.

Buddha didn’t have the Sunday ticket.

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• Keith Urban is a Drowning Man

Keith Bourbon won a CMA for Male Vocalist of the Year the other night, but he wasn’t there to accept it because he was in rehab. Lucky him. The show was more boring than watching Kelly Ripa’s spray on tan dry. Okay, I’m lying there. I’d give my left arm to watch that. How about more mind numbing than listening to Kelly Ripa speak. The CMA’s, okay - I didn’t watch it. But I know it was terrible based on the assumption that 1) all awards shows fill me with that embarrassed self-loathing reminder that I gave any of these people any of my time or money throughout the year, and that now they have misinterpreted that into thinking they are better than me and/or the rest of us hard working schlubs - so much so that they think that we want to watch them award one and other and self-congratulate like a sex-addict in a dressing room at the Hustler Store, and 2) modern country music has become the most predictable, repetitive, oversimplified and commercialized bastardization of an art form put out by soulless pretty people since Ramona the Elephant’s zookeeper started selling the abstract art she’d painted with her trunk.

But the focus the day after this year’s CMA’s was all about Keith Bourban. **(I must digress to acknowledge that some attention went to Faith Hill for her caught-on-camera angry howl upon losing one award (she has won 3 CMA’s and 3 Grammy’s already by the way) was clipped and posted on YouTube, but I actually saw that as the one honest and non-hypocritically plastic moments of live TV that anyone has seen in a long time. I’m sure her personal assistant sees that howling, angry face much more often than the one that graces her dozen or so magazine covers each year. She should be upset for having been nominated for something and not having won. What would we do without Faith Hill? How on earth will she make it now?)** But Keith Bourbon wasn’t able to attend the show and accept his second Male Vocalist of the Year CMA because he was in rehab. A rehab so vital and urgent that it sadly had to be timed exactly with the voting period preceding the CMA’s. In a statement in an article given to Best Life magazine just before entering rehab, Bourbon said that he felt like he was “lost at sea… like a drowning man.” Drowning? Drowning in what? - Success? Recognition? Money? Gold Records? CMA’s? Clichés?… I don’t care what his childhood may have been like or what demons tickle his attention bone. Simply put, he should be finding happiness in his money, his houses, his personal staff, his cars and his clothes. You want to be depressed? First, try to sense what’s it like not getting everything what you want out of life and then having to turn to the Pittsburgh Steelers to squeeze any joy out of a miserable and painfully disappointing existence. And then they go 2-6 on you!!

Even without any CMA’s, Keith Bourbon is probably the second best looking man in America - first when Brad Pitt is out-of-country carrying orphans through airports. And he’s married to Nicole Kidman. That on one hand may be among the highest accomplishments achievable by a dude - or more likely… perhaps he should openly admit that he drinks and does line after line of cocaine to escape the crushing misery of having married a neurotic, animatronic, narcissistic, crazy-eyed, ghost-like, frigid, ice queen, still-obsessed-with-Tom-Cruise woman who has probably put the clamp on his having any good times at all. Why would I automatically blame the woman? I’ve seen it too many times, my friends, good times deemed ‘dangerous.’ A guy being happy deemed a threat. This is not misogyny, it’s women misunderstanding guys. It’s marriage.

Or maybe if he didn’t say on his website about his latest album, “Of Love, Pain & the Whole Crazy Thing”: “It’s just an accurate reflection of where I am now. I think it’s the sound of being happy with my life and passionate about the music that I’m making… When the title came to me, it was obvious – it seemed to fit.” (Was that before he got married?) He’s not in rehab for happiness and passion, is he? Yet in the Best Life article, he’s trying to give us plebeians some good advice: “start communicating with the people around you.” I say start hiding things from them, Keith.

Or maybe I’d have more sympathy for Bourbon if he didn’t refer to himself on his website as “a global musical force.” Next step: inter-galactic musical act-of-God.

He also adds about his new (undoubtedly just one of his) house(s), “I found this house in Nashville that had a great room in the front of it, with windows all around and amazing views, here I could set up my studio. It was supposed to be the dining room, but I sacrificed that for the music.” Can you imagine having sacrificed his dining room for his music studio? Can you imagine sacrificing your own dining room for anything but dining? Why does God bless only such geniuses with that kind of vision and leave the rest of us wallowing? But then, where on earth can he and Nicole possibly entertain guests then? It’s mind-boggling. Of all the mistakes I’ve made in my life, now I look at the dining room that I don’t have in the house I can’t afford and I realize that I never hypothetically converted it to a studio or anything useful. I’m drowning.

That’s it. I’m starting a new club in Hollywood, and I’m going to call it REHAB. Then I’ll get headlines too every time Keith Urban or Lindsay Lohan comes in and gets drunk at REHAB. Maybe I can get in on this eternal and never failing PR machine (see ‘Sucker Free Countdown’).