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Sandra Bullock’s academy award win on Sunday came with the certainty of the red carpet itself. Her role in The Blind Sidewas, in every way, the equivelent of Julia Robert’s Oscar-winning performance in 2000’s Erin Brokovich: an adequate, if predictable portrayal of a stubborn woman, that involved dying one’s famous tresses from brown to blond.
There are some actresses, Sandy and Jules are two of them that have a likeability quotient that surpasses whatever talent they may have. Meg Ryan had this quality too until that nasty little affair with Russel Crow when they made the altogether forgettable movie, Proof of Life.
I liked The Blind Side in large part because it is a sweet story with a happy ending and there are far too few of those on screen and in real life.
But did Sandra Bullock deserve to win? Based on what was easily her best on-screen performance to date? Yes, though personally, she broke my heart in the film 28 Days. Based on other performances by nominees Gabourey Sidibe, Carey Mulligen, Meryl Streep and Dame (Damn!) Hellen Mirren? Nope. Not even close.
Gabourey Sidibe should have won and didn’t simply because the academy voters don’t believe that a fat, happy (by all deliberate and exhaustive accounts) black girl playing a fat, miserable one, consititutes “acting”.
If the academy didn’t believe that Sidibe is exuberant at more than 350lbs, then they likely questioned the authenticity of her performance as simply not being that difficult to pull off. To be that fat is to be thatmiserable…and therefore not as big a stretch to play miserable on screen.
In the land of before and after pictures, Hollywood loves transformative roles; Renee Zellweger was lauded for her (gasp) 20lb weight gain for Bridget Jones’s Diary and the lovelyCharlize Theron was later awarded an Oscar for her role as doughy Aileen Wuronos in 2003’s Monster. In order for Sidibe’s performance to have been rewarded with a much-deserved Oscar,she would have had to have started out thin, gained 200lbs, and lost it in time for the fall press junkets.
Even so, it may have been difficult to trump Bullock’s likability.
And nice… matters.
If you don’t believe me, ask James Cameron. Consider that that his films, The Abyss, Titanic and Avatar, have moved the motion picture industry into new areas of development that didn’t exist until James Cameron made it so. Avataris the equivalent of the Quadruple Axel and should have won Best Director and Best Picture no matter what metric the academy used to measure, but for one: James Cameron is a douchebag.
That Avatar didn’t win Best Picture and James Cameron didn’t win Best Director is less about The Hurt Locker being the superior film as it is that Cameron is an ego maniacal, philandering butt-head whose reputationfor creative brilliance is eclipsed by his narcissism and cruelty.
I side with Howard Stern, Sidibe’s 15 minutes are ticking and nothing short of significant weight loss, preferably done front-and-center on a reality television show are going to shore up her options for more film work.
But Gabby seems to have the best of all things on her side: she is nice.

It is always difficult to argue with people who site “God’s Plan” as their justification for what they do or don’t do, isn’t it?
I was pleased to hear that Sarah Palin had joined the Fox New news team. It would seem now that my exposure to her propogatin’ and talkin’ about what weighs on the minds and hearts of the American People,er, uh, her loyal fans, is mitigated by the fact that I don’t watch Fox News. Not ever.
The broader speculation is that Palin has officially taken a 2012 run at the Presidency off her salmon burger serving table, believing that God’s Plan for her is to advance the national conservative agenda from the Fox News studio rather than the Oval Office.
During Palin’s campaign run, False Auntie once commented that among the complex reasons that Palin was a weak Vice Presidential candidate is that she lacks intellectual curiosity.
It’s not that Sarah Palin isn’t capable of articulating her opinions, or that her opinions aren’t valid, but rather that her opinions and her depth of knowledge is equivalent to that of a middle-school-er. She lacks the critical thinking and analytical skills that make for both good pundits and good politicians.
I can’t stand Bill O’Reilly, but he holds his Masters Degree in Public Administration from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Ann Coulter scares me to death, but has her JD from the University of Michigan Law School and was the editor of the Michigan Law Review. Sarah Palin has a borderline speech impediment, admittedly doesn’t read and as such has a limited vocabulary, and has a sketchy academic track record that includes 3 marginal universities before graduating with a communications-journalism degree and a minor in political science from the University of Idaho.
On Fox, Palin won’t be able to conceal that which she does not know, which is plenty, and she’s lost “campaign stress” as a possible defense. She won’t be able to keep up with O’Reilly who will tire of her pedantic, tea-spoon depth of understanding and of lobbing her softballs. I predict Sarah’s stint on Fox will be short lived and that as she makes more appearances, her growing insecurities will flare when she’s challenged or questioned on inaccurate statements she will undoubtedly make. Palin will eventually resign, because conveniently her, up until this point, incredibly capable and independent family will need her.
That too, will be God’s Plan, won’t it?

The temperature gauge in my car reads 3 degrees at too-early-in-the-morning as I make my way to the airport for a flight that few people know Im taking. Its been a rough few months and despite the freshness of the New Year, I find that Im still licking wounds from 2009 when I approach the intersection where a left turn will take me to the airport.
The same homeless guy whos always there, is there again this morning and hes dressed not near warm enough, wearing a jacket from Good Will, the words Presidents Club in yellow script across the breast suggestingthe previous wearers successful achievement in a now irrelevant sales pursuit.
It is crispy -nostril -hair kind of cold and even as Im cursing myself for not having stopped at an ATM for cash thatI will need to pay tolls later today, Im digging through the change I keep in my car. I come up with less than a dollar. My car window cracks open in protest sounding like angry Rice Krispies and I motion the man to my car, apologizing for what little I have to offer, not wanting to offend him with such a small amount.
I can use this to buy coffee he tells me in the blast of arctic air between us.
When the light changes, Im not even over the bridge before Im staving off the wellspring of tears that never seem to be too terribly far from my eyes these days. I dont have any make-up with me and cant afford to be both fat and mascara stained today; the former I can do nothing about so I focus on the blink, blink, blink of the latter until the feeling passes.
Ive been so caught up in the giant sucking sound that is my life right now that Ive lost perspective. Irrespective of my job, my Bedouin life, or the failed and estranged relationships that litter my path like too many Starbucks sleeves, Im not (yet) panhandling in 3 degree weather. So, you know, there’s that.
If love is fickle, hope might be one of lifes great constants. Certainly I hope the best for the people I love. I hope the best for our country and its leaders. I hopethat the man I gave the spare changeto finds somecomfort from a warm cup of coffee… ora stiff drink.
Dogs and cats lick their wounds because their saliva has healing properties in it. So it is true with we two-legged creatures as well; we metaphorically lick our wounds, and find that there are opportunities for healing in unexpected places.
I found mine at the corner of Cant Go Back and Stop Feeling Sorry for Yourself.

When former Miss California, Carrie Prejean abruptly settled her libel and defamation case, in which she cited religious persecution against Miss California pageant organizers amid rumors of a sex tape, my reaction was, serves you right, you noxious twit.
I dont have an issue with conservative women or the conservative agenda per se, but rather the cake-and-eat-it too mentality that seems to plague the more famous or infamous of them.
So called conservative women ought not send video- taped masturbatory sessions featuring oral copulation of a foreign object with the same mouth that denounces same-sex marriages on a nationally televised beauty pageant. If the former is little more than a young woman who should have known better, and didnt then the latter is, well, a young woman who should of known better, and didnt.
She makes the point in her book, Still Standing: The Untold Story of My Fight Against Gossip, Hate and Political Attacks that shes just another conservative woman who is a victim of liberal media bias and that shes been Palinized by the same. Prejans position is that her rights to free speech have been violated as she has been surreptitiously undermined by the media, Donald Trump, the pageant organizers as every facet of her life has been scrutinized.
It may surprise my 10 remaining blog readers (down frommyhigh of 12 readers)that I believe that her free-speech rights have in fact been compromised because she had the courage nee stupidity to express an opinion that today is held by a majority of Americans: that the rights of marriage should only apply to one man and one woman foolish enough to believe that they will emerge on the other side of the divorce statistic.
I kid, I kid. Prejean expressed an opinion and shes been punished for it.
The reason I find conservative ideology so terrifying is because of its want to restrict other freedoms.
At almost 40 years old, I would not have an abortion; I object to it for reasons that are part political and part spiritual. However, I acknowledge that I couldnt possibly know every circumstance where abortion might be viable and that its arrogant to think that I or my government can legislate against something that were not meant to have the answers to.
Starbucks coffee to any conservative friend who can provide a biblical and rhetoric-free explanation on how the same conservative agenda that promotes Pro-Life can also be in favor of the Death Penalty.
Where same-sex marriage is concerned, again, it isnt a choice I would make for myself, but Im not arrogant enough to think that I am the authority on what people should be allowed to do with one another behind closed doors.If you believe the biblical perspective that homosexuality is an abomination against God, Ive yet to find the scripture that says that Anne Coulter, Rush Limbaugh and their like- minded ilk are empowered to make those decisions for the rest of us.
But if I have the right to discuss my beliefs then, so should Carrie Prejean, so should we all.
What I ask myself as a writer and as a liberal is this: does the fact that her opinion is repugnant to me give me the right to be especially pejorative? Did her answer during the Miss USA pageant which clearly came from her heart, warrant the backlash that she has since endured? Or have her actions since (semi-nude modeling shots, a sexting video and behavior that have ran the gamut from petulant and unprofessional to just plain bizarre) set a course apart from her pageant answer? How, can she claim the conservative woman title with so much of her behavior anything but?
It would be like meaffirming my ownpolitical correctness, orsecond virginity or republican leanings.
On the subject of free-speech, her rights have clearly and absolutely been compromised and shes owed a collective apology for that.
She owes us an apology too, for being less, much less the woman she portends to be.

It’s been so long since I’ve posted… anything and I would urge you to keep fairly low expectations for this entry.
Though I would very much like to write about Mackenzie Phillips ill-conceived tell all book and couch-side sit in with Oprah, I’m glued to Facebook with a now empty bag of Peanut Butter M&M’s and a house full of someone else’s cats, half watching Glee.
I’ll start with this: I loved not working.
From thefirst spring flowers that pushed up between the cigarette butts in McPherson Square to the first leaf that fell outside the condo, I loved every minute of not working. Oh sure, I’d have liked to have made a dent in the 100 or so lbs I need to lose, or to have finished the outline of the book I’d like to write. I find though that in large part what I needed was to do absolutely nothing.
And to do it with Jerry Springer playing in the background.
Which I did, for 5 months.
With funds diminishing, and yet determined not to go back into a sales career, I accepted a position that has me (for all intents and purposes) commuting from DC to KC until at least March 2010. As I’ve signed enough Non-Disclosure Agreements to wall-paper my infamous 740 square feet, I can’t divulged what exactly it is that I’m doing apart from to say that my clothes remain on at all times and despite having grown up in Kansas City, I am seeing parts of this town that were, until recently as foreign to me as well, a foreign country.
Being “home” is wonderfulfor manyreasons. As TS is from here as well and currently looking for work in DC, he can travel with me and pick up some additional work in KC to sustain him until something more permanent comes his way. Although my travel expenses are reimbursed, I can stay with the False Auntie and Uncle where there is, in no particular order, 4 cats, 2 refridgerators and 1 bag of Gumi Bears at any given time.
So why am I so restless? As Reese Witherspoon quipped in the otherwise forgettable Sweet Home Alabama (Ok so I watch it every time it’s on FX, but whatever) “I’m happy in (DC) but this (KC) fits too”. With one foot in both places, I’m not all that happy in either of them.
I wonder, were this project to be based in California (near my mother and brother) or in Denver (near my brother) would I be as conflicted about “home” as I am now. And if I’m as conflicted about being here is what I’m alleging, then why haven’t I just moved back to Kansas City where I can plug into a life- a good life- without having to wage war during my commute to Fairfax and without having to speak 4 different languages in order to pick up my dry cleaning and order a cup of coffee?
This is what keeps me up at night. That, and the pot of coffee.

Isometimes wonder if the sum total of False Auntie’s and my Mom’s activities for the week surroundtheir superhuman ability to read and disseminate information. I read, but at a second- grade level compared to the two of them who read so much that they’ll sometimes buy a book and discover two chapters in that they’ve already read it.
False Auntie sent me a link to a Time Magazine article about Bush’s decision not to extend a Presidential pardon to Scooter Libby despite the enormous pressure that VP Dick Cheney put upon him to do so.
http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1912297-1,00.html
If you’ve not read the article, this one provides asuccinct overviewof ‘Plamegate”, the disclosing of CIA Operative Valerie Plame’s identity as a retaliation for anti-Bush comments regarding the war in Iraqpublished in an Op-Ed piece byValerie Plame’swriter husband that subsequently ended her career with the CIA.
The Time Magazine article asserts that by Bush’s second term, he had begun to part ways with Cheney ideologically on many issues.As Cheney looked around D.C.he found that most ofthegood-’ol-boys network had moved on to other pursuits and he found himself at odds with nearlyeveryone particulary Condoleezza Rice who was making some diplomatic progress in areas that Cheney had sought to squelchduring the first term.
Bush suggested thatif he found out that anyone inhis administration was responsible for outing Valerie Plame, that individualwould be fired. Scooter Libby wound up with a criminal conviction, a fine and a 2 year sentence which Bush later commuted.
Ultimately, Scooter didn’t receive the pardon. Bush held his ground onan issuethat was a clear embarrassment to him and his administration. It was nanny-nanny-boo-boo politicswithin hisparty and the article makes it clear that Bush understood that.
Either Scooter Libby leaked Plame’s identity on his own, or (as I believe), Cheney instigated the leak under the supposition that anything conducted under the umbrella of National Securitywas pardonable. Scooter would have have hadplausible deniability because in truth he may not have leaked Plame’s identity directly but rather may have agreed to take the fall for Cheney based on a many year friendship and that they were and are “right-fighters”.
Bushhad outside parties review, and then review again trial testimony and all concluded the same thing: that Scooter Libby had perjured himself and obstructed justice in thematter related to Valerie Plame…because to have told the truth would have implicated Cheney and completely derailed Bush’s eight years in office. Bush connected the last dot himself: that Cheney had betrayed the office of the President.
The only way for Bush to be certain that Cheney “got it”, without point blank stating the obvious, was to deny Scooter’s pardon; something that Cheney had likelypromised to Scooter.
Although Scootercouldwipes his hineywith the amount of money represented bythe fine and thanks to the President, didn’t serve a day of his 30 month sentence, the felony conviction resulted in his disbarment from Pennsylvania and D.C. and he’s become a pariah in a townwhere hewas once both respected and feared.
And I think it’s fair to say that Cheney and Bush aren’t going to any church pot-lucks togetherthis summer.
When Bush’s memoirs are published next year, I think we’ll be reading about a man who, particularly duringhislast term stopped letting Karl Rove, Scooter Libby and Dick Cheney run the White House like a University of Texas Fraternity. If you take the position that minus the “brains” of the organization, Bush was unable to manage the war on terrorism and the economic muck we’re now mired in, you can argue that Bush needed them. Like drinking coffee even though it gives you the runs: the need for caffeine is greater than the negative effects.
With every Presidentwe’ve elected during my lifetime, therehas been atremendous difference between the man who walks down Pennsylvania Avenue on inauguration day and the man who takes his last ride on Air Force One some 4 or 8 years later. Most of the time, the President rides in on a magic carpet and leaves on a mule.
I wonder though, if Bush is different. He didn’t ride in on a magic carpet havinglost the popular vote and won the election amid voting controversy in a state governed by his brother. During his 8 years in office itseems he was betrayed over and over again by people who were supposed to be trusted advisers. But in his final 72 hours in office, he demonstratedthe character and strength of a President.
And on thatcold day this past January,if not a magic carpet, I’d have given him keys to a scooter.
Category: Politics and Poop | 1 Comment »

The older I get, the more persnickety I become over words and their usage. Most days, I make a poor excuse for an English Major in that my spelling and punctuation, even with spell check and grammar check are inconsistent. I drives TS crazyand he begs me to let him edit my work before it goes on line.
There are two kinds of writers: ones who happily show first drafts of their work and ones who would likely pry that same first draft from the readers cold dead hands. Regrettably, I’m in the latter category. That, and the immediacy of on-line writing is such that if I were to edit and then edit again everything that I write, I’d never get anything posted.
This is what I tell myself.
By way of bringing current my few readers who aren’t friends with me on facebook, I made a status update last night during Obama’s press conference suggesting that “incentivize” which he used no fewer than 4 times in his hour at the podium, is not a word. It was a Blackberry update from my perfect blue sofa so when I immediately got a reply that the word is listed in the American Heritage Dictionary, I was nothing if not chagrined.
Linguistically, I expect and appreciate that the English language evolves. As a lover of words, I celebrate the distinctions between slang, colloquialisms and common vernacular. For example, if I send a package to my mother in California, I’m not going to say, “I sent that package using a service that guarantees she’ll have it in 2 days”. Instead I’ll say, “I Fedex-ed that package to my mom”, even if I sent it UPS “Blue” or USPS Express. Fedex has become the commonly accepted word for expedited package delivery so much so that Federal Express legally changed their name to Fedex. All facial tissue is “Kleenex”,even if the brand is “Puffs”. Fedex and Kleenex aren’t really words, except that they are.
Then there are made up words to describe ideas or in many instances items that didn’t exist 50 years ago and include words such as “motherboard”, “walkman” and”iPod”. We know what these words mean because we understand the item that the word references. iPod isn’t really a word either, except that it is.
“Incentivize” and the two other cringe worthy words that peeve me, “enthused” and “horrific” may be listed in one dictionary or another but in a good, better, best articulation of a concept or an idea, these words are better left for any member of the Bush family as well as the Alaskan Princess, Sarah Palin because each is a bastardization of the correct word. Smart people (and I mean you, Mr. President)use the correct word or tense of the word, “to incent/incentive”, “enthusiasm/enthusiastic” and “horrifying”. That “incentivize” specifically isn’t a word,Ibase on the fact that the correct word exists.
“Americans need to be incentivized to make better health care choices” should simply be, “Americans need an incentive to make better health care choices” or “As President, it’s my responsibility to incent Americans to make better health care choices”.
“I am so enthused about my sex life” is correctly said as either “I have enthusiasm about my sex life” which is admittedly awkward or “I am enthusiastic about my sex life”.
“That plane crash was horrific” is better said as “That plane crash was horrifying“.
Speaking of that which is horrifying, very few things are. In reaching for and using the most extreme words to describe the ordinary, we’ve become a society of emotional illiterates. September 11th was horrifying. You in a fender-bender on the Courtney Campbell Causeway, not horrifying. Scary? Yes. Inconvenient? Probably. But not horrifying. It’s sad Walter Cronkite died this summer. Sad, but not tragic. Not every life experience is devastating, some are merely dismal. Yet over and over again we reach as a collective to the most extreme ends of human emotion to express how we’re feeling. We’re no longer “tired” or “sleepy”, we’re mentally, physically and spiritually “exhausted”. In using word polarity, we become numb not only to how we arefeeling but we become numb to how other people are feeling as well. To be clear, I’m not suggesting an opinion over an expressed emotion. It’s possible that you were personally “detroyed” over Michael Jackson’s passing and if that’s the case, I’m sorry for your pain. I wonder though, might you really be feeling, “disturbed” or “nostalgic”?
Words matter. Unlike the McDonnalds McCafe commericals, you can’t add an”e” at the end of the word to jazz up the connotation. When, “my lips need some chapstick” turns into, “my lips need to be chapstickavated” or “Judge! I’m innocent” evolves into “Judge, I’m innocentavized”, we dilute meaning until it’s a wonder we can understand one another at all.
Category: Blog Blend | 7 Comments »

Prompted by False Auntie, I did an unofficial survey of my 258 facebook friends and discovered that far more that I would have expected have “friended” Sarah Palin. I would be less than truthful if I said that this doesn’t bother me because I find that it does.
You think you know people, right?
Forget for a moment that Sarah Palin lacks intellectual curiosity or that she’s a pathological liar. Forget that she has, at best, a remedial understanding of the Constitution. Forget too that she hides behind staunch right-wing, evangelical Christian rhetoric that in any other circumstance would be categorized has hate speech to promote an agenda which is anti-women and anti-gay. Forget that her abstinence only stance on teenage sexuality surely contributed to the out-of-wedlock pregnancy of her own daughter. Forget that she’s eager to get into a pissing match with her would-be former son-in-law over her “real” reasons for abandoning her post as governor of Alaska. Hell, even forget that I’ve taught ESL students in Arlington who have a better command of the English language than Sarah Palin has.
Yet 7 out of 10 Republicans have said that they would vote for her in 2012.
They will vote for a woman who dishes out blame like too many spoiled salmon cakes.
From her rambling resignation speach, she managed to blame the press for propagating “the politics of destruction” and contributing to her financial hardship (since WHEN is a 7 figure book deal and 6 figure speaking engagement fees a financial hardship?) without once acknowledging that her political behavior didn’t merit some intense scrutiny.
From the August 2009 issue of Runner’s World, when asked, “If you go a day or a week without running, what do you learn about yourself ” she responded “Sweat is my sanity. A great frustration I had during the campaign was when the McCain staff wouldn’t care out time for me to go for a run.”
Are you kidding me? This is the same woman who wants the world to believe that she’s capable of running the free world but she won’t wake up 30 minutes earlier to log 3 miles on a treadmill?
To my Republican, God-lovin’, right-wing, pro-life, gun-totin’ build-a-bunker-in-your-basement friends: get yourself another conservative candidate. Get someone who can set aside his or her arrogance to build a platform that’s based on lowering taxes, smaller Government, free market enterprise. You deserve better. We all do.
If you’re going to be the President, it’s not OK to say that your faith and family come first (as Palin did in her resignation speech) when we expect the men and women in the armed services to put their country first.
Lest you think I’m a big Obama fan, I’m not. I’m a democrat, sure, but more than that, I’m an American who watched our civil liberties eradicated during the corruption that was the Bush administration.
As for Sarah Palin, I hope she stays in Alaska and becomes a distant memory.

I know, I know. I’ve been absent from the blog for months now but for the occasional post back in June, I’ve been neglecting my readers.
I’m having some laptop issues that are making it difficult to take a badly needed Wordpress Update, I’ve lost touch with Lao-Lao my blog administrator and have put considerable efforts into my examiner column which is my only paid gig at this point.
Monday afternoon, I was interviewed by the local CBS affiliate, WUSA Channel 9’s Brittnay Morehouse on a column I wrote concerning South Carolina Governor, Mark Sanford. While the interview lasted about 40 minutes, the actual piece that aired is just over 2 minutes in length.
I’m pleased with how the piece came out and I’m thrilled that she refers to me as a writer and a columnist. Overall, a very positive experience, a great resume builder.

They also did a nice follow up article, http://www.wusa9.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=88166&catid=188
Apart from my brief brush with fame, things in DC are same-same (in a good way). TS continues to look for employment, we go to the gym every day and we’re on the last John Adams disc (as good as everyone said it was). The weather has been lovely; I can’t remember a summer where the weather has been less humid with so many days of sunshine.
Today is a writing day for me; I have 3 pieces that I need to write… so stay tuned!