Pet Cobra

The Best Medicine

I've been mad as hell for a while. Unlike most people who've been opposed to health insurance reform, I have a dog in this fight. He's very real, unlike the scenarios and speculations  - "death panels/government-mandated abortions/my kids will spend the rest of their lives in debt!" - born of ignorance and fueled not by politicians or even journalists, but entertainers, the Limbaughs and Becks who know damn well why the advertisers and networks pay them the big bucks. (At least Al Franken put up and ran for office. I can't imagine either of these guys giving up their 8-figure salaries for a congressman's pay, regardless of how much free oxycotin came with the job.)

But the more I think about all of this, the funnier it gets. The cavalcade of  outraged right-wing loons is like a clown car, discharging one petulant child after another. Exhibit A: 

So the same guys who are accusing President Obama of destroying the Constitution now want to...destroy the Constitution. You can't make this stuff up.

Exhibit B: At least 10 - oops, now it's up to 14 - states are lining up to sue the Federal government. This is funny to me for a couple of reasons. One, apparently none of these Attorneys General has heard the term "supremacy clause". Second, if these guys are looking for salvation in the 10th Amendment, good luck. Ask Wesley Snipes and Willie Nelson how their "you can't tax me because it's not in the Constitution!" defenses went. 

Exhibit C: "It's SOCIALISM!" Well, guess what:

And on, and on, and on.  The GOP and their Tea Party allies have become one long never-ending Onion article. Their impotent shrieks are funny. Really. Personally, I hope this goes on all summer. And if you think things are funny now, just wait until the first GOP candidate makes a speech about why insurance companies SHOULD have the power to drop your coverage whenever the hell they want, or why pre-existing conditions are good for America's kids. 

Because here's the thing - if you really want to bring someone low, don't fight them, don't argue with them, just laugh at them. Laugh loud and long.

Our CBS News Interview, About Which I Will Now Shut Up

In case you missed it. Our segment is brief, but the spotlight's on the kid, where it should be - he's really what this is all about. Beth and I have received many, many emails and tweets containing many, many good thoughts, and for that we cannot thank you enough. 

Watch CBS News Videos Online

Six Word Stories: The Anthology

So the other night, I'm on the Twitter and Roger Ebert starts this meme, Six Word Stories. It's what it sounds like. A story told in six words. (Hemingway, of course, is the all-time champ: "For sale: baby shoes, never worn.") Here are some of the ones I did.

He closed his eyes. And fired.

The car stopped. She kept going.

"Oxycontin? Sure, why not", said Limbaugh.

He woke bloodstained, full moon above.

He pulled the ripcord. "Knapsack. Shit."

"Ooooh! Whale!", baby Ahab squealed happily.

"What's THIS button do?" "STO-" Boom.

Lighting kimchee-fueled farts proved fatal.

"Uh...which one was the quaalude?"

"Soylent Brown is hamsters! IT'S HAAAAAAAAAMSTERRRRRRRRRRRRSS!"

"Your favorite?" "Josh Groban." "Check please." 

"Where is that goddamn cat?" "BELLLLLLLCH."

They sighed collectively, then played "Freebird".

Say, Is That Alpaca Surfing?

Well, technically no, as he doesn't get to his feet. Alpakook.

Children By The Millions

The story goes that when Alex Chilton, then the teenaged lead singer of The Box Tops, showed up to record the single "The Letter", the producers thought he sounded too young. So what he did was, he went into a room and screamed and screamed and screamed until his voice sounded like it had been bathed in cigarette smoke and age, and then he recorded the song. I don't know if that story is true, but I like it. It sounds like something I'd do.

Alex Chilton died today, days before he was set to reunite with surviving Big Star members for a show at SXSW. If you have to ask who Alex Chilton is, I kind of feel bad for you, but I also envy you, for you can (and should) Google "Alex Chilton" and discover greatness in simplicity, as clear and beautiful as the stars over a dark highway.

Empowered

"Maybe passing the health care bill will bring on a Republican tsunami. Maybe it will create a generation of Democrats who revere Obama the way their great-grandparents revered FDR. Maybe you'll be back in Congress next year. Maybe you won't. Either way, this is too big a vote to cast on the basis of politics. Every so often, a bill comes along that's bigger than anything your predecessor got to touch. You're the lucky bastard who had your seat in 2010, when that bill reached the floor. And here you are, worrying about your career, when the purpose of your career is staring you in the face."

- William Saletan, from his Slate article, "Hedgislation"

A few emails went back and forth yesterday, and tomorrow, if things go as planned, a team from CBS News (national, mind you) will be coming to our house and talking to us about how health insurance reform will affect us. 

There's a myriad of things I want to say, starting with what Saletan said above, to the nightmarish experience of dealing with repeated rejections by insurance companies for various "pre-existing conditions", to the disgust I feel at Republicans who've so twisted and perverted this issue without offering any solutions of their own, to the anger I feel towards people (some of whom I used to consider friends) who are blind to the struggles we and millions like us face, who blame me and Beth and even Lucas for decisions made by soulless company apparatchiks. 

What I am thinking about is my son. His life. Our lives, lived in fear of his every cough, sneeze, headache, bruise, pain. 

I'm nervous as hell. National TV. But beneath that, I'm giddy. Watching the pundits and the obstructionists on one side and the spineless members of the party I voted for - the ones that were charged with doing SOMETHING about this, and not caving in to fear - has left me feeling voiceless. Powerless. Hopeless. But tomorrow I get to have a say. I get to tell our story, which, sadly, isn't unique. I get to speak for millions like us, to deliver our truths to power, to remind those who govern that our struggles are and must always be theirs. And there's a thought, small, a whisper, that maybe it will be enough.

Respect The Muse, Even When She Says "Cocktail Onion"

I was looking for something to write about. "Cocktail onion" popped into my head. So: 

Consider the cocktail onion. It's a paradox. An onion that goes in a drink. It stands apart from fellow onions: small, pickled, jarred. It doesn't taste like an onion. There's very little you can do with them, save put them in a drink, and as we've established, that goes against conventional thinking. The cocktail onion is a condiment without a country.

Here's the thing with the cocktail onion: way back before you and I were born, someone decided to take those poor wretched runts of the onion litter, cast away like club-footed Spartan babies, and raise them up into something that could be loved. Then someone else thought it might be a kick to put one of those in a drink, cherries and olives be damned. At some point someone else pulled a stalk of rhubarb out of the ground, ate it, spat it out in disgust, thought for a moment, took the whole bunch of rhubarb home, chopped it up, dumped a bunch of sugar on it, put it in a pie crust, baked it, and ate the result. This is how civilization advances. One day rhubarb pie, the next the space shuttle.

There was a jar of them in the fridge, and on a whim one night (Beth was out with her friends, the children were a-bed,  "Dollhouse" was on the TV, the air was electric with possibilities) I swapped out one of my two standard olives with a cocktail onion. Over the skewered pair went the vodka. The taste was interesting, the briny snap of the olive with the acrid sweetness of the onion. It was as unlikely as the name Elisha Dushku. An onion. Pickled, yes, but still an onion. In a drink. Go figure. A blog post about said cocktail onion. Again, go figure.

Calling In Sick

I woke up hacking phlegm and shivering. The kids and Beth had been sick and now it was time for me to pay the muthafuckin' piper. I shuffled around the house like it was a sanitarium. I watched my hands put a bagel in the toaster and fry an egg. The body checked my email. The eyes stared at the screen, then through it. When I had a "real job" I used to love getting sick, regardless of how bad I felt. Getting paid to ride on a codeine cloud. Good times. But now I'm a struggling writer and ain't nobody going to do this shit for me. The brain always writes even if the fingers don't. I thought of a post for DadCentric. I thought of script ideas for a DadCentric TV show. I thought of a post for UpTake. I thought of pinging an agent or two about my non-fiction book idea. I thought of working on the novel. I ignored the phone. I coughed. I stood up. I got woozy. Repeated this a few times. I looked at Twitter. I looked at Facebook. I coughed up a lung. I put some laundry in the dryer. I emptied the dishwasher.  I sweated out poison. Beth was focused on her work. One kid was at school, the other was at her nanny's.  The house was deafeningly quiet. The words stayed in my head. They called in sick.

"This Too Shall Pass": OK Go Makes The Best Music Video Of All Time

Don't believe me? Watch.

 

 (Video courtesy of The AV Club.)

Galileo

The panic was tangible and it might have been funny. There was an earthquake, and hundreds died, but it was thousands of miles away. It was a coastal quake and only then did it become our problem. Tsunami! Everyone here braced for impact. The tweets and updates rained like debris falling from a burning tower. When would it hit? Would we lose Hawaii? My God, my cousin lives three miles from Mission Bay - she needs to get out of there NOW. Rafts were constructed. Xanax was taken. The only thing that would have made it more perfect: a press conference from President Morgan Freeman, reassuring us that that we as an American species would survive - well, some of  us, anyway; the rest should stock up on Ensure and pray to whatever gods we believe in for deliverance or gills. The news of impending watery disaster interrupted the news about our young athletes, collecting medal after medal, on a world stage constructed in Canada, which hey, is pretty much America anyway. The tidal wave was a tidal ripple, and that was surely divine intervention, never mind the way the ocean works. (They're surfing in Hawaii?! Are they insane?!) The movie studios and tanning salons and golf courses and microbrewpubs were spared. Of course they were. We are a bright sun around which the Universe revolves.