What's It All About?

What could have possibly stir up the long dormant ranting of the Grande Enchilada? Governor Christie's Bridgegate? That spawn of Satan, Assad, massacring his own people in Syria? Vladimir Putin (every day)?
All of the above, of course, but what got my goat yesterday was something infuriating enough, but far less tragic.
First, some background. I have seen a couple of those Broadway musicals (yes, this is today's incendiary topic) that are supposed to be about young, hip people being bohemians, all rebellious rock & roll. Apparently, nobody involved ever notices that the words "young and hip" and the words "Broadway musical" are, for the most part, mutually exclusive. If you are truly hip, then you are nowhere near a Broadway musical. And to judge from the audiences, the same goes for "young".
With the exception of Hair in its day, which has some pretty nice music and some disturbing war stuff going on, I hold this to be truth to be self-evident.
The first one of these youth-centered musicals I saw was Rent, which is supposed to be La Boheme transposed to the now defunct starving artists of the East Village (currently to be found gentrifying the far edges of Bushwick, or getting free housing in Detroit). Every single thing about that show was neither hip nor authentic, nor really bohemian, and the music was a saccharine travesty of rock. Then I saw Spring Awakening, of which I remember nothing but a bunch of intolerable young people, choreographed to act rebellious, climbing on walls.
I must alert you, I hate young people. In particular in America, they are fed on a steady pablum of personal reinforcement and cheerful, if delusional empowerment that leads them to believe they can actually do anything they set their minds to. This is not always bad (think Lena Dunham, or Mark Zuckerberg, or your precocious genius du jour), but it seems to breed an overconfidence in their own talent that we are supposed to forgive in lieu of its youthful exuberance.
Which brings me to the case in point.
Kyle Riabko, an enterprising young talent, decided to bestow the genius of Burt Bacharach on the people of his generation. This, on paper, is an awesome idea. God knows his generation needs to learn a thing or two about crafting spectacularly melodic, original, unforgettable songs. His show, called What's It All About. Bacharach: Reimagined, is where the concept went south.
I grew up with Burt Bacharach (he was huge in Mexico). Just reading the titles of the songs in the playbill brought their melodies instantly to my mind. "I Say A Little Prayer", "Do You Know The Way To San Jose", "Walk On By", "I'll Never Fall In Love Again", "Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head"... etc. I was intrigued by several glowing reviews that claimed that the sparse arrangements (no Dionne Warwick, no amazing brass section) brought a fresh light to Bacharach's iconic music. Sure enough, the show sheds a new light on the songs, but not always for the right reasons.
If an opera singer sang "Do You Know The Way To San Jose", and eluded most of the quickfire notes that cascade in the second phrase (na na na na nana, nana nana nana nana), they would be torn apart by the audience. If they had to cheat and lower their pitch one register as they sang "Walk on By", I shudder to think. As I listened to the young, not particularly spellbinding performers, I did get an epiphany about Bacharach's music. The songs bloom with notes, resembling baroque arias or complex jazz melodies. But that is because of what's missing in Riabko's arrangements: they avoid many of the notes that make the songs a challenge to sing and a beauty to listen to. Some of the arrangements sound like U2, or Coldplay, some like those ubiquitous TV commercials that think they can sell you anything with a ukulele and a xylophone. Some of them were perfectly nice. The most fortunate was a quiet group rendition of "(They Long To Be) Close To You", a song so richly gorgeous that it's pretty impossible to screw up. But with any of the more challenging melodies, my sense is that the arrangements took the easy way out, leaving the audience to mentally hum the missing music. Which is not totally criminal, if done the right way. Burt Bacharach's best songs (he wrote some treacle here and there) are so intricate, the melodies so unpredictable, that even in the hands of unseasoned, if well meaning artists, they still soar.
Alas, as I watched the very young performers mug for the audience like an overgrown troupe of Mousketeers, I was reminded of the essential Noel Coward theatrical dictum: "Don't just do something, stand there". Unless you are at the opera, or a traditional Broadway musical with a dramatic libretto, you don't need to act the songs. Sing the glorious music with those crazy cool lyrics by Hal David and call it a day. The music does 75% of the work. But the cast was mimicking reading love notes, then tearing them apart, smiling maniacally, dancing halfheartedly at some stupid choreography intended to evoke youth, or in the case of the promising singer who tried her hand at a bluesy adaptation of "Don't Make Me Over", actually forcing herself to cry while looking at the floor the entire song. Honey, the tears are already in the music and the lyrics. The direction and the conception are both sophomoric and hokey.
Then, as the Magnificent Arepa cannily pointed out, how can this be a show for Riabko's "generation" if the median age of the audience is 65? Or, in my case, if it feels like watching Up With People? Arepa was reminded of the Catholic spiritual retreats of her youth, which tried, with guitars and bonfires, to seem cool and hip.
If you want to be cool and hip, you either have to be Patti Smith, or you have to play in cool and hip places, like the Mercury Lounge or the Bowery Ballroom or any cavernous hall in the boonies of Greenpoint or Gowanus. You are not hip and cool if you put on something that works too hard to be likable; that wants to behave like a Broadway show.
Which is a pity, because Burt Bacharach is the coolest and the hippest, as Elvis Costello, who was in attendance, can attest to, since he has collaborated with Bacharach. Also in attendance, and sitting right next to Costello was Mike Myers, Austin Powers to you, which was bizarre and thrilling, and ultimately mortifying. I doubt that they went for the painfully fake, utterly unhip, youthful exuberance shtick.
This show could have promise if it were stripped entirely of its annoying theatrical pretense, and packaged as an intimate recital of a bunch of amazing songs.

Obama: Cruel And Unusual Punishment

They are not that different. Photo via Gawker.

Barack Obama is great at giving rousing speeches of consolation after every fresh mowing down of Americans, whether it's toddlers in Newtown or runners and their supporters in Boston, but his presidency is marred by having increased some of the cruelest policies in the history of this country. Those who love him, want to pretend this is not happening. They give the guy a pass they would not dream of giving George W. Bush. After 9/11 and with the pretext of fighting terrorism, this country threw the Constitution in the garbage and set it on fire, discarded the Geneva Convention, and imposed a series of unprecedented measures that strongly curtail the safeguarding of individual rights and the administration of true justice. What is going on in terms of lawlessness is directly proportional to our revolting public discourse about freedom and democracy. Revolting.
1. Guantánamo. Wasn't he supposed to close it? There is a terrible hunger strike going on, in which some prisoners are being force fed with tubes up their noses. Some of these prisoners have been festering in there for more than a decade. This defies the Geneva convention, the American Constitution, and every human rights law in existence. This is an outrage. For instance:

In September 2012, a Yemeni man named Adnan Latif died at Guantanamo in what officials say was a suicide. Latif had been cleared by the Bush and Obama administration, and a federal judge had ordered his release. That order was overturned on the Obama Department of Justice's appeal, however, and Latif died after a decade of imprisonment despite never having been accused of a crime. He was the ninth person to die at Guantanamo.

2. Drone attacks in Pakistan. I'm no fan of islamist barbarians, but these attacks seem to hurt far more civilians than they should. They also increase the fanatical hatred that these people harbor for the US.

3. Mass deportations of undocumented immigrants through a cruel, inhumane, utterly repulsive system manned by the Department of Homeland Security and ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), which is based on keeping detainees in private prisons that happen to make money by the inmate. This is appalling.
There have been more deportations in Obama's presidency than at any other period in American history. This has been documented extensively, but if you want your liver to collapse, read William Finnegan's piece in The New Yorker about an American man, Mark Lyttle, a unfortunately brown skinned redneck, who was deported to Mexico twice, despite the fact that he is mentally ill, and as American as apple pie and egregious human rights abuses. Out of 400,000 deportees, about 1% are American citizens who are wrongly deported because of a despicable system that is willfully blind to justice and reason.
Since it looks to the rest of the world that we only shed tears, do vigils, light candles, bring flowers and write poems when Americans suffer, think of your fellow citizens. That could be you on the wrong side of the incompetent, sadistic bureaucrats of the DHS and ICE. Hell, with enough bad luck, someone might confuse you with a member of Al-Qaeda and send you to Guantánamo, where you have no rights whatsoever.
These things not only go on unabated in the era of Hope and Change, but they are pursued with unusual zeal, because Obama's greatest fear is to be accused of being soft on terrorism, of being a tender hearted liberal who doesn't have the balls to stand up to the "enemies" of this country.
So next time he brings a tear to your eye with his oratory, remember, there but for the grace of God you go. We are letting this country become a fascist state. It has become worse during this Democratic presidency. Don't whine later when your rights are trampled.

American Psycho

It's that time of year when yet another gun massacre happens in America, when we almost tear our hair out in disbelief at the dangerous psychosis of those in this country who, against all reason, common sense, or morality, equate freedom with having "the right" to privately own weapons designed to kill as many people as possible in the shortest amount of time. There is absolutely no reason in God's green earth that a housewife should keep, not one, but three semi-automatic weapons at home. None whatsoever. There is no human law that can justify such an evil monstrosity, let alone the horrifying consequences of it. The fact that Mrs. Lanza, lover of guns, was able to purchase and keep those weapons at home is evil incarnate already. We need not wait for a deranged white male to illustrate this with yet another bloodbath.
Indeed, the Second Amendment, which many are hellbent in misreading and protecting, does not allow for that. It allows for you to form a well-regulated militia and arm yourself with 17th century muskets against the King of England. It's time to dismantle this irrelevant, ancient law, just as we did away with slavery, or enacted civil rights, or other sensible laws that protect our citizenry from human evil.
I guess gun loving Americans don't really care about how this is perceived by the rest of humanity. Because, surely, no other place on Earth has this conundrum. Everywhere where reason prevails, and civilization reigns, and even where they don't, nobody thinks it smart, let alone NORMAL, to arm guards outside of kindergartens, or to give college students weapons. Next thing we know, we should demand a Glock with the price of our movie ticket, just in case. Everywhere in the world but here, this is sheer insanity.
As for Wayne La Pierre (a villainous sounding name, is it not?), the NRA and the rest of this developmentally arrested country, I propose that as we ban, repeal, and burn to the crisp the Second Amendment, we also outlaw once and for all the concept of the "Good Guys vs. The Bad Guys", which is only fit for children the age of those poor little souls mowed down by Adam Lanza. Adults who keep looking at the world in terms of good guys and bad guys are morons, and they seem to be holding us all hostage. They are the ones responsible for our wars, and for encouraging mayhem through violent video games and entertainment. Not a week after Newtown, I saw a preview for a big Hollywood movie, Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters, the two kids now grown and killing witches with oversized weapons that belong in World War Three. A fairy tale turned by the American imagination into a despicable barrage of firepower, people of flesh and blood made into cartoon characters who think nothing of shooting endless automatic rounds at "the bad guys". This violent pornography is aimed to entertain children younger than Adam Lanza, or Dylan Klebold, all these unsupervised misfits armed with violent video games and computers. And it is exported all over the world. Luckily for the world, their children do not have as much access to guns as ours.
The NRA press conference has been labeled as pathetic. It is much more than that. It is the incarnation of sheer evil. One cannot watch it and not feel soiled, revolted at the insanity, the cynicism, the cognitive dissonance of a proposal that offers to arm guards outside of schools but neglects to blame the ease of getting weapons as the source of the violence. The astounding disrespect, not only to the grieving families of Newtown, but to the entire nation, that is to use this opportunity to encourage paranoia and irrationality, to monger fear about "untold number of monsters" that roam free in our society ready to wreak havoc, without mentioning that it is the NRA that makes it possible for them to have murder weapons in their hands. They waited a week to pipe up and this is the grotesque, putrescent bile that came out of their mouths. Listening to La Pierre is fearing we live in a nightmarish parallel universe absent of moral coherence, rationality and sense, of human understanding. It is absolute infamy.
I wonder if the surviving relatives of all the victims of these American catastrophes aided and abetted by the NRA, could not file a class action suit against the organization, much in the way that people sue for millions when they burn themselves with hot food at McDonald's.
Police departments (not the most liberal constituency), mayors of cities, concerned citizens, most people with half a brain, we all feel powerless against the influence of a lobby for the gun industry.
No matter how many statistics scream bloody murders in armed homes, no matter how many countries like Japan and Australia have minimal homicide rates because of stringent gun control laws, here we haven't been able to do anything about it, for no good reason at all.
Let's imagine what Adam Lanza or all the other unhinged shooters could have inflicted in their unfathomable rage without the aid of endless rounds of lethal ammunition. I hold the NRA, every member of Congress, our Supreme Court and our President responsible for the murder of all these children and adults, until they find it in their hearts to pass stringent gun control laws.

National Bullshitting Company

I have been too busy to post lately (working on a fabulous project that does not allow me to devote myself to this). But I'm still very upset about two things that have already happened in this internet age where everything dies as soon as it lives.
1. 
My hatred for NBC continues unabated. A lot has been said about their moronic coverage of the Olympics, but I still need to get this off my chest. When people in Afghanistan and Mexico and the rest of the world can watch the Olympic opening ceremonies live but we in the United States of Farkakteness can't, it is very bad. To be fair, I realized that reading the tweets and facebook updates of the lucky twitterverse was far more fun than watching the unwieldy, ridiculous spectacle itself. But that is not the point. The point is that corporations like NBC are turning the United States into a third world dump with their sheer moronic corporate groupthink. NBC, acting as if this is still 1953 and television is the only broadcasting miracle around, is pandering to their advertisers and what they guess is their idea of what the American people want. They apparently have not read the memo that the entire world is now talking via social media (and not necessarily to "like" Pampers on facebook). It makes us feel like idiots. It makes us feel like we live in a hole in the ground, swamped in human shit trickling from the corporate boardroom above our heads. They are so stupid that they were tweeting the ceremony without broadcasting it or streaming it live, inviting the ire of millions of Americans who would otherwise have been happy as clams. 
Instead of using the billions they spent on the broadcasting rights to create an amazing live conversation with THE ENTIRE FUCKING WORLD, amassing good faith, loyalty and great p.r. among the viewers, NBC managed to alienate everyone with their greed, pettiness and their close-minded, provincial, antiquated, revolting "all-American" narrative, where there is barely room for athletes of other countries. So retarded are they that they cut out a tribute to the victims of the London bombings at the ceremony in order to show Ryan Seacrest interviewing Michael Phelps. 
If I were one of their advertisers, I'd be furious at NBC for deviating the attention and monopolizing the conversation in all the wrong ways. Making people hate their million-dollar commercials in advance. 
I wish NBC Comcast, or whatever corporate clusterfuck they are, death and destruction. 
2. 
That idiot who shot the people at the Batman movie in Colorado. Every time something like this happens, it's the wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth and tearing of garments, but nobody does anything to change the murderous laws that allow Americans to buy assault weapons without even showing an ID. It has been widely pointed out that we cannot buy kiddie chocolates Kinder Bueno in the US because they have plastic toys inside that may make kids choke, but in certain states people can acquire 6000 rounds of ammo as if they were buying Skittles. This is patently insane, but we live in a patently insane country. What will it take to repeal the Second Amendment? Why is this so difficult? When is candidate Obama going to show some balls and talk about the issue? 
Of all the ideological battles in this crazy country, gun control takes the cake (above abortion, gay rights, taxes and everything else that makes no sense). 
Maybe a freaking shootout in the halls of Congress is what's needed. 
The other thing I want to happen is for this idiot to lose his orange hair. Why have the prison authorities not given him a haircut? He's in jail, not at the circus. 

Off with his hair!

Mexican Ongepachket

This is what the nouvelle Mexican cuisine of some New York restaurants should be called. Some people just don't know how to leave well enough (or genius, in the case of Mexican food) alone. This is the case of Empellón Cocina, a super hyped, expensive new Mexican restaurant that has some critics raving. Not yours truly.
It's not that the food at Empellón Cocina is bad. Some of it is very tasty. But it suffers from ongepatchket-ness. This is a priceless Yiddish word meant to describe the overdone and over the top when it comes to food, furniture and fashion. For instance, Christian Lacroix: ongepatchket; Early Prada: not ongepatchket. Rococo: ongepatchket; Mid Century Modern, not ongepatchket.  You get the idea.
My mom used to couple the word when referring to overloaded fashions, foods, or decor with an expression of profound disdain.
I went to dinner with my good friend Seth. We started out with an appetizer of chicharrones with a wonderful warm green salsa of capers and tomatillo. No one ever heard of capers in tomatillo salsa, but this was truly delicious. The chicharrones were perfect and fluffy and almost ethereal, no hairs, stringiness,  hardness or burns of any kind, as you are wont to find in the big pieces of fresh chicharrón that are sold by the giant bag in Mexico. Here they were so perfect and airy they lacked a bit of oomph.
I ordered the margarita with mezcal, up with salt and it was a wonderful, wonderful drink, served in a classic margarita glass (not a fish tank), with what they called smoked salt.
We also started with the gordita with smoked plantain, chorizo and egg yolk (au cheval, as they say in French) and the sopecitos de lengua with salsa de árbol (tongue sopes). Here is where things started derailing a bit. There is no doubt that the quality of the ingredients is top notch and so is the preparation. The corn masa is very good. But chef Alex Stupak apparently never met an ingredient he didn't like. He uses five more ingredients in everything when five less will suffice. Hence, ongepatchket.
The gordita, for instance, comes garnished with two spears of romaine lettuce. This is out of Ionesco. Romaine doesn't add anything. If it's meant as a joke, it doesn't land the punchline. An actual gordita you may have at a market is a round, thick, fluffy fried disk of corn masa filled with beans or, if you are lucky, pressed chicharrón. This one had refried "smoked" plantains on the side, which were very yummy and looked like refried beans. But I don't remember the chorizo nor the yolk, because it was all rather dainty. The sopecitos were tiny chunky disks of fried masa with beans. The beans were good. They did not have the overload of cumin that is the mark of typical bad Mexican food in America. The tongue I could barely taste, because there wasn't much of it and the salsa de árbol tasted like a better version of the Valentina hot sauce that comes from a bottle. It's not that it tastes bad, but that it's the kind of tangy hot sauce you drizzle on raw fruits and carrots or jicama or cucumbers, not on cooked food. This is how much of a Mexican fineshmecker I am.
For entrees I had the Maine diver scallops with Surryano (?) ham and chilaquiles verdes. The scallops (all two of them) were cooked to perfection, plump and delicious. The ham with a weird name was chewy and bacony. But the chilaquiles were tiny squares of fried masa with a puny drizzle of green sauce. They tasted like good chilaquiles allright, and it is smart to do a mini version of them to avoid overpowering the seafood, but that may be why Mexicans wouldn't dream of putting scallops next to chilaquiles in the first place. A sense of proportion. In this case, the totally unnecessary ingredient -- you are never going to guess -- was peas. Peas as in English peas, mealy, bland and utterly out of place with everything else. The dish would be much better without them. This was served in a little cast iron dish and set us back $21. Which I find rather outrageous. This is the other thing that gets my goat about the precious new Mexican restaurants in NY. The prices look reasonable on the menu but turn out to be a bit of a ripoff when you see the size of the portions. A gordita, i.e. street food, for $8 is some sort of bad cosmic joke. Empellón charges $3 per salsa, whereas the humblest taco stand in Mexico gives you three or more generously sized bowls of different salsas for free.
Seth trusted my instincts, which at that point were to stay away from dishes with 29 ingredients, so he ordered the Estofado de costillas, a Oaxacan style baby back rib stew with plantains and pineapple, that was very bland and totally unsuccessful. Sorry, Seth. You are welcome to exact revenge any time. Boiled tofu should do the trick.
I couldn't believe that the dessert menu included a strawberry gaznate (gahz-nah-teh). Gaznates are the cheap Mexican version of cannoli. They are sold only on the street and they are always predictably awful. Maybe the original ones were made with real strawberry or vanilla cream filling, but the current version is made with industrial grade, petroleum-based whipped cream and pink food coloring. I was curious to see what would become of the lowly gaznate in a fancy restaurant. Well, it was certainly the best gaznate I ever had. The dough was crispy and tasted slightly better than the street version; the filling was superior to the authentic one, but basically strawberry fluff; sweet in a way that got boring quickly. I feel bad being such a bitch about it since I told the waiter the story of gaznates, he went and told the pastry chef and they comped us the dessert. If you told any Mexican that you paid $8 for a gaznate, however glorified, they would die laughing.
I had a wonderful time with Seth and some of the bites were very good, the service was crisp and professional, but in the end the overall effect was not as sublime as I'm sure the hardworking chef intends. He is quite gifted, but some ingredient editing may do him wonders.
Now get me two pastores con todo, asap.

Here's part of the menu. You tell me if it doesn't sound like the Rococo of Mexican food:

Oh Sugar

I saw that report on sugar by Dr. Gupta on 60 Minutes. I think he should be locked away and never heard from again. What irresponsibility, what vile yellow journalism, to demonize and slander one of the few pleasurable delights mankind still enjoys in utter innocence; one of the few pleasures rich and poor can enjoy equally.
To make people feel like pariahs because they want to enjoy an ice cream cone or a piece of cake. To compare sugar to freaking heroin! That is criminal.
But such is life in this crazy country, where no one has ever heard of NUANCE. Everybody talks about moderation but they wouldn't know it if it bit them in the ass. Yes, if you wash down your junk food with 5 liters of Coke a day, you may be signing up for limb amputation; but geez, stop treating food and drink as if they are poison.
There are other more poisonous stuffs in our midst. (Our current Supreme Court is one of them. The other is Republicans).
Sugar? Sugar is a honey.
Food and drink are sources of pleasure and culture and civilization. They are not out to get you. 
Sugar is not gonna kill you if you enjoy it in moderation. In fact, it may add years of happiness to your miserable, puny life.
The other day I went to Italian gelateria Amorino and had the medium ice cream cup (manifesting heroic restraint by avoiding the large size and the crispy, sugary cone, which I'm definitely having next time).
I had their chocolate hazelnut, which they modestly call L'inimitabile, pistachio and banana ice cream. The first two are bliss on earth. Happiness in a cup. All is well with the world. Life is beautiful. Orgasm of the mouth. The banana is just good.
One lick of that heavenly creamy L'inimitabile ice cream and I was ready to forgive everybody everything. I sat there licking my bliss in a more zen meditative state than any mantra could possibly achieve. That ice cream almost restored my faith in mankind (not that I ever had any to begin with). This has got to be better than crystal meth, no?
Dr. Gupta informs us that sugar raises dopamine levels in the brain, which is the substance that makes you feel good. Voilá! What could possibly be wrong with feeling good? Has Dr. Gupta tried the banana cream pie at The Dutch? The pain au chocolat or the financier at Millefeuille? A Ladureé macaron? Probably not. Otherwise, he wouldn't dare cast these libelous aspersions. Otherwise, he'd be a happy man.
So don't make it like a little dessert is a worse enemy than a lethal drug, you scaremongering vantzes.
We all know that sugar gets stored in the body as fat. You don't need to make it sound like Adolf Hitler has risen from the dead and is coming back to get us.
All you need to tell people is to get off their ass and try to eat more varied stuffs that are more natural. When it comes to refined sugars, exercise some sort of human restraint, is all we need to do. I do believe that high fructose corn syrup is more addictive than cane sugar, regardless of what 60 Minutes says. So have Mexican Coke instead of American Coke.
Sugar? You are going to have to pry it from my dead, cold hands, as they say.

Let's Rant Today

We haven't done it in soooo long, it's starting to feel like this Enchilada has lost her kick, but we can always count on someone to get a rise out of us, so here goes:

Yesterday, attending a performance of Other Desert Cities on Broadway, the guy stuffing the seat in front of me is wearing a white baseball cap. Every time he moves his head, instead of the stage, I see a huge blob of visor, flap or however you call it. This has happened before. Usually people take off their headgear as the lights go down, and in case they don't, one only has to ask politely and people will comply.
I had a feeling that with this individual it wasn't gonna be so easy. Who wears a white baseball cap to a Broadway play at 8 pm at night? In the sweetest voice I could muster, I said:
ME:
Sorry to disturb you, but will you please remove your cap when the play begins?
HUMAN STUFFED DERMA:
NO! I WILL NOT REMOVE MY CAP!
ME:
It is disturbing my view.
HSD:
You will see just fine.
ME:
No I won't.
HSD:
I DON'T FEEL COMFORTABLE TAKING OFF MY CAP!
ME:
Even in the dark?
I considered calling the usher, but there were plenty of empty seats around me so I switched seats and I let it go, not before saying:
"I want you to know that this is extremely rude and in bad taste. I asked you politely". 
Then I muttered "stupid people with caps" and "asshole" sotto voce, for dramatic flourish.
Now, if the guy had said, "I have a protuberance the size of Nairobi that will distract you far more than the lousy cap", or "you really don't want to have my naked pate with random hairs in front of you, lady, it's a horror show", or seriously, "I have a medical condition and I can't do that for you", I would have been empathetic.
But where the hell do neurotic New Yorkers get off with this sense of entitled self-pity? ME ME ME! I am special, so screw anybody else. Whatever happened to manners? Back in the day, you had to remove your hat any time you went inside. Those were the rules. Hey, back in the day people would go to Broadway in evening attire, not jeans and sneakers. I wished I could channel Maggie Smith in Downton Abbey and give this whiner a piece of my mind. I hate that show (oh yes I do) but Maggie Smith is God's gift to mankind. She is immortal.
Next:
I am addicted to Farmland Dairies Skim Plus Chocolate Milk with Omega-3. I have a bowl (or two) of that with Cheerios every night and I credit this diet with losing 7-8 pounds since the Summer. Roll your eyes as much as you want. The milk is creamy, tastes strongly of chocolate, and last time I had a cholesterol screening, my good cholesterol went up. Heaven. Now, this baby does not come cheap: almost six bucks for a half gallon. I guzzle it like a Hummer guzzles gas. Alas, the last two times I bought it, it had changed. Gone was the creaminess, gone was the chocolatey flavor, now it was plain mediocre milk with a faint taste of chocolate. The price, however, remains the same, if it has not gone up. In the Morton Williams in front of my house, prices rise by the hour. Anyway, you bet I gave them a call. And spoke at length about my disgruntlement to the answering machine. Very politely, but not, as devastatingly as Maggie Smith in Downton Abbey.

Occupy Cable

I don't understand how The People don't send all the cable companies to the guillotine.
They are sheer incompetent evil. I got an offer from Time Warner Cable for a pretty good deal including cable, internet and phone for 89.99 a month (for the first year, then it's 3 million dollars a minute). I don't have cable and I'm paying more than that, so I decide to switch.
Any time you have to deal with any of these companies, I assure you, you will rue the day.
As we are getting ready to set up the switch, the other shoe starts dropping: there's a $25 installation fee, (okay), and another $25 FCC fee they never mentioned until after I had agreed to switch. Fine.
We set up an appointment. But I have to reschedule it because of an important conflict. This is when they actually start behaving like assholes. It turns out, that like a bad date, they are so busy, the next appointment is until 2045. But I have already asked my other company to disconnect service, right? So I'm screwed. They finally give me a date 2 days hence and then we are all so happy it worked out only for the guy to inform me that they cannot connect the phone that day, so it's gonna be another $25 for another appointment. I told them to go fuck themselves. They have been calling me about my missed appointment ever since.
So back to my regular company. Since I threatened to leave, they are offering me a sweet deal. Why can't they just offer a fair deal to everybody without all the drama?
I take the deal. The guy comes at the last minute of the three hour appointment window and sets up my new super fast modem -- which doesn't work. Why? Because the order was not set up properly. So he has to come again the next day. To be fair, this guy is pretty reliable. He comes the next day, at the hour he said he would, and sets everything up. Presto. Happiness. Today I try to call Texas and a voice informs me that my long distance service is not set up. AAARRRGGGHHH.
When private companies behave like inefficient public bureaucracies, something is very wrong. They charge an arm and a leg, plus the other arm and leg in absurd fees and taxes. Same happens with airlines and other American corporations that gauge the customers AND treat us like crap. What is up with that?

Today On I've Had It With Hollywood

My review of Into The Abyss, a Tale of Death, A Tale of Life, by Werner Herzog.

Yet one more movie which should encourage the national debate about the death penalty in the US. We are after all, the only civilized, industrialized nation that has it, to our enduring shame. We are in the company of evil, rogue, and backward regimes. Just to be in that list should make us strike it down.
It is a complicated issue. True, there are certain people one wishes they die a painful death. If someone killed someone I loved, I'm sure I would feel a burning desire for revenge, but that doesn't mean that this is what a civilized democracy in the 21st century needs to do for me. To put them away for life should be punishment enough.
It's hard to fathom how all those ghastly Republicans bitch and moan about big government, but they conveniently forget to factor in that the death penalty is the most humongous, egregious intrusion of government into the lives of citizens. All they want is to shirk their responsibilities to their fellow citizens and not pay taxes, but government is suddenly not big enough when it comes to the death penalty or to telling women what to do with their reproductive health, or to terrorize hardworking illegal immigrants, or put mostly people of color in jail and profit from it.
Hardly anything that their beloved Jesus Christ would have ever approved of.
In fact, Jesus was a victim of the death penalty. It is beyond human reason how they can reconcile his suffering and his teachings, to which the notion of revenge is anathema, to their cheering a candidate under whose watch more people get executed by the state than anywhere in the world, except perhaps for Ghadaffi's Libya, or Syria. This brand of American Christianity can only be described at bat-shit lunatic crazy, and evil. And the sane citizens of this country need to fight it with all their might, if they want to live in a free democracy.

My Response To Reed Hastings of Netflix

He wrote me a letter, so I wrote him back:

Hi Reed!

I was one of those customers who did not care about the increase. I thought it was understandable. Having both streaming and delivery for the same price was too good to be true. 

You may have made mistakes in the way you communicated the increase to your consumers, but that is nothing compared to the branding and marketing mistake you are making now.

I'm sure you will find that your letter, far from appeasing your customer base, is going to have the opposite effect. 

The name Netflix is such a powerful, unique brand that it has become a verb. But besides misadventures in marketing, which customers care absolutely nothing for, (all we want is quality, convenience and value), why would your customers who would like to enjoy both services want have to deal with two separate sites, under two different names? The refusal to integrate both services under the Netflix brand is incomprehensible to us run of the mill humans; only marketing mutants can understand such absurd decisions. Why would we want to have two separate charges in our monthly credit card bill?  As if people don't have enough saturation on the internet already. Why not leave both under the Netflix name and figure out a way to bill customers without inconveniencing us? Nobody needs yet another brand in this world.

I was one of the first users of Netflix and I evangelized about it to anyone who would listen. It pains me to deal with these issues after so many years of being a very happy customer. 

Sincerely,

The Grande Enchilada.

Diallo-Rama

So we finally get to see and hear the woman who accused DSK of attempted rape. She had the risky idea to tell her story to Good Morning America. Now everybody is saying she sounds fake. I saw the interview. Looks like it was edited by Young Frankenstein.  Robin Roberts solemnly asks a question -- cut to Miss Diallo answering -- cut to images of them walking down the street -- cut to another question. Clumsy, stilted and the rhythm is off. Why couldn't it be a natural conversation where we could get a more spontaneous appearance from Diallo? I saw the TV interview with the father of that crazy Norwegian creep and the camera was set behind him, so as not to show his face, and was fixed on the reporter as she spoke with him. There were no cuts or camera moves. The compassion in her face was palpable, and his declarations, uncut and unrehearsed, felt genuine, poor man.
What I'm saying is that I would not blame Nafi Diallo exclusively for seeming histrionic and fake. This piece of garbage journalism is rehearsed and overbaked. 
Still, she doesn't come across like the shy, mousy thing people expect of a rape victim. She is attractive and exuberant. She is histrionic. She cries, or pretends to, on command. Her accent is funny. She has personality. She went over the top with the bit about finding out DSK was going to be the next president of France and fearing for her life because in her country if you mess with power, you can end up dead. But I kinda like her spunk. I like that maybe DSK finally met his match. Instead of one shitty human being maybe now we have two. Bring it!
At this point she may be eyeing the book contract and the paid appearances, but she has to know that if she goes to court, as she so fervently wishes, the defense is going to destroy her. She knows what they are saying about her lies to immigration, contacts with undesirables, numerous bank accounts and all that, so if she insists on a day in court, either she is too brave, or she's nuts.
Maybe she went on TV to perversely encourage Cyrus Vance not to pursue the criminal case, so she can try to get the money from the civil case? Otherwise, I think it was a pretty bad move, unless she is one of those people whose goal in life is to be on TV. Still, as I have said before, she may be a conniving diva, but if she was attacked, a crime was committed and needs to be brought to justice. I still believe she was attacked.

Now, all those indignant people who are livid about the fact that immigrants from fucked up countries lie in order to gain political asylum in this country, do me a favor, get a life.
People want to lynch this woman because omg! she lied in her immigration application. Americans behave sometimes as if they cannot fathom that someone would lie for whatever reason. This George Washington syndrome is very annoying. People tell lies all the time. Pious lies, little white lies, necessary lies, malignant lies. Don't act as if this sullies your entire concept of humanity beyond repair.
Guess what, if you come from a hellish place and this is the way you can gain entry into the land of opportunity, you are going to lie to get in. People lie to the asylum system all the time because they are desperate to come here. It's not good that they lie, but as Suketu Mehta writes in this week's New Yorker, it's what gets them in and it's what is expected. Officials expect to hear the most truculent stories and so applicants make them up, or embellish on already horrible circumstances. Everybody knows applicants lie. Everybody knows business owners look at social security numbers that might be fake and look the other way. So stop the freaking self-righteous hypocrisy already. It's revolting.
Many immigrants abuse the asylum system. I heard of a Venezuelan gay man who claimed political persecution, even though there is no official policy of harassment against gays in that country (simply put, everyone is homophobic). As I was reading Mehta's account of the immigrants' lies about atrocities and torture, I remembered reading about the Iraqi translators who have helped American troops in that war and now that they ask for asylum for totally legitimate reasons, they are completely ignored and abandoned by the US government. These people risked their lives to collaborate with an occupying force and this is the thanks they get.
Americans will never understand what it means for someone to seek a better life in a foreign country. (Well, let me qualify that. They may start knowing what it means after August 2, when we default on our debt. But that's another story, also involving a very particular form of local stupidity).
Many Americans don't understand the risks people are willing to take, or the things they are willing to do to be able to have a decent life. They get all bent out of shape because people fake their names, their social security cards, their stories. I'm not saying it's okay, but I can understand why they do it. As long as they work hard, pay taxes and do not harm anybody, what the hell do you care?
You don't know how good you have it here.  You don't know that people from other less coddled countries navigate much more treacherous realities, full of impunity, corruption, chaos, poverty, and hardship. Get a passport and travel around (all-inclusive resorts in the Caribbean don't count) so you can get a sense of the real world out there, you morally superior fucks.

Crowd Control is Getting Out of Line

I was very happy when I heard the news that the Marriage Equality law passed in New York. No less is expected from New York. For this is New York, and it is how it should be.

So now everybody is going to have equal access to the Wedding Industrial Complex Ripoff Machine (flowers: $20; same flowers for a wedding: $200). Mazel Tov!

I wrote to Republican senators Saland and Grisanti on Friday morning to remind them that this is not a religious issue but an issue of legal discrimination and civil rights.
I'd like to believe that they read my letter and said, what the hell, why not?

On Friday night there were lots of people celebrating in front of the Stonewall Inn, and I wondered just how many of them actually feel the immediate hankering to get married. But even though the legalization of gay marriage in NYS is an enormously important issue with real-life consequences for many couples and families, it is also a highly symbolic issue that positively affects those who have no intention of marrying. It means that the barriers are coming down. It means that we are becoming a more evolved and fair society.

The barriers that seem to keep multiplying, however, are those horrid methods of crowd control used by the NYPD since 9/11. The first gay pride parade I ever witnessed in NYC was about 14 years ago. People would line up in the streets and the parade would go by. I barely remember a barricade. But now, NYC crowd control has has an almost fascistic, authoritarian feel. We got out of the subway on Sheridan Square and because parade watchers were squeezed inside the barricades like human Spam, we decided that we didn't want to be penned in like cattle so we wanted to go back into the subway from which we had just emerged less than one foot away, yet the police made us get on a tortuous line and snake around the block in order to do so. I respect that there is order. In fact, one of the reasons I enjoy living here is that people respect order, but this is ridiculous.

Americans are oblivious to the fact that they are the best behaved crowds in the world. Americans see a random person standing in front of them and they instinctively form a line. Where I come from, and in most countries, rich and poor, people either do not fathom the concept of an orderly crowd or they do anything in their power to fight it.
Just see what happens every time you try to board a plane going somewhere other than the US. It doesn't matter how many times before people have been in the same situation, they crowd around the gate as if they were in a mosh pit. So since Americans are so good at policing themselves at crowds, why does the police feel the need to treat American crowds like POWs? Americans are so good, that even when they are treated like cattle, they quietly obey (for the most part) and they continue having a good time. In other places, these kinds of constraints would spark stampedes or rioting.
I see this as the next great civil rights issue: the right to enjoy a parade without feeling punished by the police.

Diminished Capacity

Mon amours:
I'm very concerned I'm losing the capacity for ranting. I don't care about anything any more. I cannot expend the energy required to be worked up into a frenzy simply because there are way too many instances that beg it of me. It's exhausting.
For instance, what the hell is going on with the vote on gay marriage in this state? What are we waiting for? Just man up and vote already. And if they vote no (very likely) I think Mayor Bloomberg should imperially declare that same sex marriage is legal in NYC, like Mayor Ebrard did in Mexico City. Let's get all those millions of dollars from marriageable gays into our economy.

Or, who does Cardinal Dolan think he is? His opinion about this issue, as the opinion of all clergy of any faith, for or against, is immaterial. There is separation of church and state, and this is a civil rights and civil law issue, not a religious issue. It's a free country and he can express his opinion, but its worth bubkes. In fact, it is worth less than that, because anything coming from the pedophile-abetting criminal institution he represents is rather rich.
By the same token, as I'm watching him deliver his tirade on TV, they cut to some protesters for and against in Albany. One of the protesters (for, I assume) is a woman rabbi who is wearing a yarmulke, peyes (the side curls) and a talit (prayer shawl). What fresh hell is this? If she could, she would have been wearing a beard too? You want to be a woman rabbi, fine. Judaism, for all its wonders, is a highly patriarchal, male-oriented religion. It is 5000 years old and not with the times in terms of women's equality, as all religions are, curiously enough. Judaism has been tweaked by liberal Americans so it can be more inclusive and so that women can be rabbis and cantors and mohels (circumcisers). But what's with the accoutrements? You just reinterpret stuff as you see fit? This is my paradox. I hate religion, but the old fashioned one seems to me more authentic than the newfangled one.

Or the article about micheladas in NY Magazine. With a recipe including a cashew salsa. Next we're going to hear about truffled michelada with a parmesan croute. Please stop getting on my nerve. Here's the simply marvelous original, for those of you who do not need useless adornments.

I wiped out on my bike on Friday. I have noticed that there have been a couple of times in my life where I have put myself in danger precisely by trying to be cautious. Case in point: years ago, Mr. Ex-Enchilada and I (me?) were out and about on a Saturday night in Mexico City. We had a drink at a bar and then about 11 pm we wanted tacos, naturally. Mr. Ex Enchilada suggested we walk to the taquería, about 12 blocks. I, fearing for our safety, insisted upon taking a cab. That's when we were abducted.
(By the way, I finally ate at famous Taquería El Paso on E 97 st. Not as good as the hype claims).

Same with the bike. The roads were slick so I decided to get on a stretch of desolate curb for safety. That's when I wiped out. I was wearing a helmet. In fact, the only part of my body that did not scrape the asphalt was my head (though my cheek did swipe the nasty pavement). So does it pay to be reckless? Or am I just a klutz?

Equal Opportunity Cheating

This is what I think. Women should give as good as they get. I think it's highly unfair for men to hog most of the cheating. I've always entertained the notion that if someone cheated on me, I would probably feel compelled to do the same. Tit for tat.
Women: let's stop being a bunch of cry babies and go for it.
I am not advocating for infidelity. I just think that the playing field should be level. It should not be a cultural thing that men can do whatever they please and this is shrugged off with the ridiculous idea that "boys will be boys", and women either stand stoically by their men or look the other way (Silda, Anne Sinclair, Hillary, Maria Shriver) or they suffer in silence, or they max out the credit card or exact revenge in God knows what way. Women give birth to men who then treat women like shit. Why is this? Because we let them set up all the rules and the rules are designed to give them all the power. If you give birth to a boy, the least you could do is to teach him to respect women. And if you give birth to a girl, you better tell her she is a human being of equal value and should demand respect. Otherwise you are in collusion with those who abuse you.
But to go back to my first point, if your man is a cheat, go have some fun yourself, if you so desire. You can have an affair, you can watch porn (good luck finding something where women are not portrayed like an inhuman hole with tits): you have the right to get off too!
I resent the notion that men are some sort of hormonally possessed neanderthals who can't control their jones, but women are too pure to be horny and are expected to behave. Some extreme societies have the burka and clitoral mutilation and stoning and burning and honor killings, which all aim to deprive women of their sexual independence. We are more civilized, but in our society there are many ways, deeply ingrained in our culture, with which men try to control our sexual freedom. They need to be in control of our sexuality, either by oversexualizing and objectifying women, like in porn, or by creating concepts like monogamy, which sound good on paper but only seem to apply to females. This is male-centric rubbish designed by them, with our acquiescence and complicity, to give them power and control over us. They can kiss my ass.
Why is most heterosexual prostitution female? Why can't there be male prostitutes for women too? This is cultural. You will argue that it is biological, and you may have had a point before the 20th century, but I have two words for you: Viagra and contraception. So fuck biology. It is doable. Let's level the playing field.
Women are not less sexual than men, nor they should be sexual only at their leisure.

Ricky Don't Lose That Number

It is true. Nobody calls anymore. I remember eons ago, when I was a young woman, I'd hang my every hope on finding messages in the answering machine when I came home from work. For the most part, the contraption remained stubbornly silent. Or I got calls from horrid schmucks I didn't want to date in the first place. I found it offensive that some overly concerned yenta had given them my phone number without asking first. So rude! But I digress. Now that I am an old, I love coming home to find the answering machine mute and unblinking; the deader, the better. My house is an oasis of quiet bliss. Every time there is a message, I jump from the fright. Except recently. I'm suddenly getting really annoying robo-calls from Charlie Rangel and Gov. Cuomo and these obnoxious politicians who should know better. Apparently, being in the No Call List (it works!) does not exempt us from being pestered by campaign callers. This should be illegal. It drives me crazy. It makes me feel like voting for the other side. It also brings out the Travis Bickle in me. I get an uncontrollable urge to buy myself a green flak jacket, get a mohawk and a sexy mole in one cheek and spray a hail of bullets into whoever is making these calls. "You talkin' to me?" Not anymore!
By the way, don't they know that we all have caller id?
The article in the NYT about the phone going the way of the dodo claims that is rude of people to call you on the phone. It's not rude if they actually know you and if they don't do it at ungodly hours. What I find even more rude and annoying than phone calls is internet chatting. I hate skype. I hate IM. Yes they are very practical, and on ocassion fun, but I rarely jump without warning into someone's busy moments of trolling around on the computer. The phone at least alerts you. I find people who jump into my virtual space on chat is like them walking into my house unannounced and uninvited. What if I'm naked, or wearing pajamas at 5 in the afternoon?
Despite my Travis Bickle tendencies, I pride myself in being a polite person. So I resent the fact that when I choose to ignore a friend who is trying to chat me up in facebook, I look like I am the one being rude. Bottom line is, people should know if they are desired. Facebook is not an equalizer. There are people who I will always be happy to hear from and be interrupted by. You gotta figure out if you are one of them. And you should know.
Many a horrible fight has been had through skype, because people are even more inarticulate and vague in writing than they are when speaking, and one cannot always discern the tone of voice in a skyped argument.  People, if you are going to text or chat, or email, you gotta be precise. Who, when, what, where, how and why?
I get texts from people who do not identify themselves. How the hell am I supposed to know who they are? My phone doesn't always show their name for some reason.
This drives me crazy. 
All this is to say that people should use texting, chatting and email etiquette.

This is Why I Hate Fashion People:

Suzy Menkes in today's New York Times:

"Friends of Mr. Galliano, who would speak only on condition of anonymity, say that they have finally persuaded the troubled designer to go immediately into rehab — and that the pace of fashion today, and particularly the rigorous structure of a corporate fashion house, broke the fragile, artistic creator.

While the vile statements seen coming from Mr. Galliano’s drunken lips on the Internet video deserved the nearly-universal condemnation they were receiving, there is pathos in the vision of one of the world’s most famous — and best paid — designers alone, clutching a glass in a bar". 

Well, BOO HOO.
Fashion people are so enamored of their own obscene irrelevancy, living in their own vulgar bubble of banality, that they can actually utter revolting statements like the one above and they don't even know or understand why this is ghastly. 
If stress were a pre-condition and a justification for bigotry, firefighters, air tower controllers, public school teachers, correctional officers, EMT personnel, nurses, among other professionals, would all be screaming racist rants every day. 
Hell, everybody who works in an office in America would belong to the KKK.
Oh, but those who work in fashion are so special and so extraordinary, so "fragile" and "artistic" and this Galliano downfall is such a tragedy... 

Suzy Menkes, give me a fucking break!
I once heard André Leon Talley say "Fashion is hope". Yeah. Tell that to someone who makes a dollar a year in some cholera infested hellhole in the world. 
Recently, Vogue (a magazine I find deeply offensive) ran a spread about the glamorous wife of the Assad tyrant in Syria. 
I wouldn't be surprised if some designer creates his new collection inspired on Muammar Gaddafi's muumuus. Fashion people are absurd, their world view is absurd and they need to wake up and smell their own bullshit. 

Cranky News Digest

Blood pressure rising as a result of reading the news:

Body scan or aggressive and insensitive pat down? Well, it's been almost ten years since 911 and we're still idiots when it comes to airport security. Given a choice, I much prefer the Israeli trained agent that looks at you in the eye and asks smart questions. I understand the volume of fliers in this country makes this wish of mine utopian, but the TSA needs to admit they are a disaster. Traveling to and from Israel this summer, no one lay a hand or a scanner on me. I didn't have to take my shoes off. I just had to answer a bunch of questions in a process that was actually faster and less annoying than any gauntlet I've ever went through stateside. Many of the questions were personal. I wonder if Americans, with their concern for privacy, and their sensitivity for political correctness, are willing to subject themselves to this kind of human intrusion. Done correctly, absolutely everyone gets profiled, not just the usual brown and turbaned suspects. I can tell you, it is much more polite, much less humiliating and SAFER than the moronic inferno (to borrow from Martin Amis) we've had for years.

Mr. Hoffman said the administration should move away from adding more layers of security for every passenger in response to every new plot and consider an Israeli-style approach to identify passengers who pose a particular risk, based on advance intelligence, questioning travelers and watching their behavior.
“We’ve had nine years of just grafting security measures one on another,” Mr. Hoffman said. “Maybe it’s time to step back, take a hard look and look for a new approach.”

What the fuck has taken them so long? 

Drivers are incensed about the proliferation of bike lanes in Manhattan. 
Guess what? I'm incensed about drivers. They pollute, make noise and clog the city with traffic. This city needs to have more space for bikes and less for cars. And people who drive should grin and bear it. I've been saying this for years. Americans need to wean themselves off their love for the automobile. Manhattan should be a mostly car-free zone (except for small taxis, public transport and delivery trucks). What happens in Brooklyn I don't care, because with all due respect to my adorable friends from that borough, I don't give a shit. But Manhattan should be like Amsterdam or Berlin, where drivers don't kvetch about bikes invading their space. The nerve.

Some Noo Yawkers go to specialists to get rid of their accents. Noooo! Why? This is such a pity. I love accents. For instance, I learned today that the twang of our beloved Mayor Bloomberg is actually Bostonian. I always thought he spoke kinda funny. We don't all want to sound bland and indistinguishable from podunk, do we?  In my building there are still several people who have New York accents so rich, I feel like I'm in a movie. I don't drink coffee, but if I did, I'd drink cawfee.

A Perfect Shitstorm

For weeks I've been waiting for a stroke of inspiration to release one of my deadly rants. Of course, in this country there is a fresh bounty of provocations every day. But some of them are not worth getting our panties up in a bunch about. For instance, I will not waste my time kvetching bitterly about the satanic stupidity of the Tea Partiers. That's way too easy. This one, however, is too good to pass:
Juan Williams gets fired from NPR because he said on Fox News that he is afraid of Muslims on planes. Meanwhile, Bill O'Reilly doesn't get fired from Fox News when he says Muslims perpetrated 9/11. And you know what? They are both right in the most idiotic, simplistic way possible. Which is why nobody should listen to either one of them morons.
O'Reilly is right. The people who attacked us that day were all Muslims. They were extremist Muslims, which are a minority in Islam, but they were nothing other than Muslim. Moreover, they attacked us precisely because we offend their particularly destructive way of interpreting Islam. What is idiotic and irresponsible is to blame absolutely every single Muslim person for 9/11. O'Reilly knows it, and he does it anyway because it means ratings and attention. And probably because he relishes the chaos he unleashes on the well-meaning, like Whoopi and Joy, who should have hollered at him until he walked off the set. Talk the asshole down, instead of playing all high and mighty, huffing and puffing with offense.
As for Juan Williams, I defy any fucking liberal (and I consider myself one, although a tad less tainted by political correctness) to tell me that they don't harbor any kind of stereotypical prejudice in their minds whatsoever, about anyone. And particularly when they are on a plane, or on the subway or anywhere that could bring their noble lives to a spectacular halt.
To O'Reilly's question of whether there is a Muslim dilemma in this country, a better answer would have been: there is only the irresponsible fear-mongering that you people are bent on creating. Otherwise, there is no Muslim dilemma whatsoever. Williams' answer was stupid, but I bet that a lot of people, who are not card carrying racists, relate to it. Let's stop pretending that we navigate this world without making these kinds of assumptions every waking second of our lives, because it is simply not true.
I am a paranoid traveler. I am always checking out everybody on the line to see if someone looks like walking mayhem to me, since I don't trust the morons from the TSA to recognize a live grenade if it explodes in their ass. It could be Oxycontin-Guzzling-Trailer-Trash-Walking-Mayhem, or it could be School-of-Mohammed-Atta-Walking-Mayhem, or a number of other potentially obnoxious fellow travelers (on planes, pretty much anyone under two feet tall gets a red alert from me).
This doesn't mean that I believe that every Muslim is a potential Mohammed Atta (although this is what Fox News and their ilk most fervently wish), or that every white person likes Jell-O with mayo and can't dance. But it infuriates me that NPR fired this idiot for speaking his mind. Since when is being a bleeding heart liberal synonymous with censorship? If you don't want Williams representing your news organization in unsavory places, don't send him to Fox News.
Now, let's remember another professional idiot, Rick Sanchez, who was fired from CNN because he said in so many words that "The Jews" own the media. A half truth, just like O'Reilly's. Some Jews own some media. Not all of them, all of it.
As a Jew, do I think that he should have been fired over the remarks? No. Had he said so on the air while on CNN, maybe. But he was on a satellite radio show with 3 listeners.
Fact is, people think prejudiced thoughts in the comfort of their own minds, but few are as stupid as to utter them in public, especially in this country, where we know better (if people were fired for thinking these kinds of thoughts, more than half the planet would be unemployed). Sanchez could have been made to apologize for spewing resentful, benighted and sclerotic antisemitism in public while representing CNN. Period. At least now we know where he stands.

Liberals have to learn to to relax the thought police and give as good as they get. Otherwise, stop the whining.

El mundo es una cloaca infecta

Translation: The world is an infected sewer. Just read the paper.

This is how I feel about it, hearing about the likes of Carl Paladino and his courting of a repulsive fringe of the fringe attention-seeking giant asshole rabbi. Memo to the both of them: enough with the gay hate. I've fucking had it with all this crap. Why are people so bent out of shape about gays? Most of the time, the most vocal anti-gay people are those who are deathly afraid of being gay themselves. Otherwise, what's it to you? So for fuck's sake, deal with it. Gay people exist, they will continue existing and they are no worse or no better than anyone else. Hence, they deserve exactly the same rights as everyone else. If you can't handle that, go to Iran. Or to Saudi Arabia. There you'll feel right at home.
That asshole Paladino has a gay nephew that all of a sudden didn't show up for work (in his uncle's very own campaign) after his uncle said horrible things about gays. This is the human turd New Yorkers want for a governor? Besides, who the fuck cares about what these ultraorthodox retrogrades think? They don't live in the modern world, They should not count for shit.

I certainly hope that both Rabbi Levin and Paladino choke on their kosher sausages.
Not that I am thrilled by that horrible Cuomo guy, but these are the freaking choices we get in this human sewer we live in. I miss Elliot Spitzer. Who is now pimping himself to CNN. Disgraceful.

I'm very happy about the Chilean miners, but I can't stand how everything becomes a vulgar, mawkish, horrendous circus. How about some dignity? Do people still know the meaning of the word? CNN makes me puke and cringe at the same time. I'm glad I didn't even watch the damn thing. Reading is better. Watching Jon Stewart skewer the whole unseemly carnival of cheese, even better.

And what is the Iranian vantz doing in Lebanon? A missile on his head could help dispel this foul mood of mine.

Then we have his counterpart Avigdor Lieberman, possibly the worst candidate to hold a Foreign Relations post in the history of mankind. A foul, abrasive right-wing asshole.
And don't be surprised if he ends up being prime minister. Israelis, if they continue voting with fear and extremism, are going to end up in even more isolation from the world. The hatred in that region is insurmountable.

No wonder I am in a bad mood.

Read Your Bible

                                                 Read, you putzes!

Thanks to my friend Cathy (and Facebook, lately almost my only source of news) I was alerted to this (from NPR):

The Pew Forum on Religious Religion and Public Life released a survey on religious knowledge today. Atheists and Agnostics scored higher on it than anyone else, closely followed by Jews and Mormons, all Christians, Protestants and Catholics, were far behind.

That's overall, but when you get into specific religions it does show a startling lack of basic knowledge by practitioners. From the report:

More than four-in-ten Catholics in the United States (45%) do not know that their church teaches that the bread and wine used in Communion do not merely symbolize but actually become the body and blood of Christ. About half of Protestants (53%) cannot correctly identify Martin Luther as the person whose writings and actions inspired the Protestant Reformation, which made their religion a separate branch of Christianity. Roughly four-in-ten Jews (43%) do not recognize that Maimonides, one of the most venerated rabbis in history, was Jewish.

The study also showed that Americans have a fairly poor understanding of religions other than their own. Only about half of the people surveyed know that Martin Luther inspired the Reformation, the Dalai Lama is Buddhist, and Joseph Smith was a Mormon.

Atheists and Agnostics scored higher on it than anyone else, closely followed by Jews and Mormons.  Well, excuse me, but I really resent this classification. I am an Atheist Jew, so that must mean I am Bible Expert Number One.
Number two, I think this is more a reflection of how stoopid and ignorant Americans are, rather than agnostics and atheists being geniuses at religion.
I took the quiz. It is so basic, it's appalling. I'm proud to report that I missed just one of the 15 answers and I think it was a trick question.
This useful bit of info is certainly welcome these days, but it is hardly surprising. Agnostics and atheists may not only know more about religion, we actually comport ourselves according to most of the better values of said beliefs, rather than pay hypocritical lip service, in the best of cases, or in the worst, use our special relationship with God to be thoroughly disgusting and abusive human beings (The Pope, The Taliban, all fundamentalists, the ultra-orthodox in Israel, Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, televangelists, etc).

Why are Atheists and Agnostics better informed? The Los Angeles Times quotes one of the researchers who has a theory:

American atheists and agnostics tend to be people who grew up in a religious tradition and consciously gave it up, often after a great deal of reflection and study, said Alan Cooperman, associate director for research at the Pew Forum.

"These are people who thought a lot about religion," he said. "They're not indifferent. They care about it."

Also interesting is that Black Protestants and Latino Catholics scored at the bottom of the survey.

I have another theory: people don't read. The less people read, the more on the bottom of the survey they will be. Agnostics and atheists read. I bet that the numbers would support me if anyone took the trouble to statistically confirm this.
Agnostics and atheists are by nature doubters, and doubters tend to be better informed about the choices out there. They don't believe everything they read. But that's because they read.
If you want to know about religion, you have to read the goddamned books. Or at least leaf through them once in a while. Or read other books about them. Otherwise, it's all hearsay, mostly devalued and distorted.
I know about Judaism because it was taught to me at home and at school, more culturally than religiously. I know about Christianity, Catholicism and Protestantism thanks to Henry VIII. I studied English literature and I'll be damned if we weren't taught every Catholic sacrament and every article of faith and that Luther nailed some paper to a Church door, in order that we could better grasp stuff like The Faerie Queene. (I fondly remember the Anabaptists, who greatly impressed me in my college days by running around naked preaching the end of the world).
The little I know about Eastern religions comes from reading The Tao of Physics, watching Kung-Fu and going to yoga and tai chi classes.
About Islam I know even less, but thanks to recent history, I know the minimum.
I'm sick and tired of lazy people who don't read. Ignorant, benighted, idiot people of all races, religions, nationalities, genders and stations in life. I particularly detest those who throw the Bible and religion around as if they had some sort of divine dispensation to feel morally superior, only because they beat their chest regularly in public. Read a freaking book so at least you know what the fuck you are talking about (I'm talking to you, Palin, and the rest of you bunch of smug intellect haters).