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AGNOSTIC MUSING OF THE DAY
Last night I broke with an ancient Judaic tradition (3300 years or so?) and decided to forego the observation of the first night of Passover in order to partake in the rites and rituals of my other religion, basketball. Now it’s not like I passed over Passover entirely. I would never have actively rejiggered my calendar of semi-religious observance in order to accommodate a basketball game. No, I am a non-interventionist non-god. I simply took advantage of the fact that my Jew crew’s annual seder had been scheduled for The Second Night of Passover (Thursday) this year instead of the first—allowing me to play in my weekly Wednesday night basketball game. On the way over there, I was thinking, you know, if there is a God, he might be pissed off with me. He might be thinking, “I part the waters so you can escape from Egypt and lay all kinds of plagues on Pharaoh and instead of saying "Thanks, God. Strong work" you ignore me and play hoops?” I’d better be very careful cause he may have some nasty injury in store for me. A little sprained ankle or poke in the eye to punish me for my wayward ways. But what I discovered was that God, if he exists, had a much more sadistically merciful form of punishment in store for me. He simply made me SUCK. Big time. He sent down a veritable plague of airballs, errant passes and clanked rims. I had more trouble finding the hole than I ever had finding the afikomen. But then I noticed that a few of the other wayward Jews on the court were playing quite well. Hmm. God wasn’t making them suck for playing on Passover. Maybe he was just angry with me. Or, maybe, just maybe it had nothing to do with God. Maybe—and here was the cruelest punishment of all—I simply sucked with no God and no one to blame it on.
CONCEPT OF THE DAY DOING DOUBLE DUTY AS REDUNDANCY OF THE DAY
Non-interventionist non-god.
TAGLINE FOR THE FRUGAL SENTIMENTALIST
Say it with Flower.
MOVIE PLUG OF THE DAY
My friend Caveh Zahedi's film “I Am A Sex Addict” opened at IFC Waverly on Wednesday. Check it out. It’s a funny. idiosyncratic movie, 15 years in the making, about his obsession with getting felatio from prostitutes and his obsession with telling the truth—inconveniently paired obsessions that, not surprisingly, helped destroy his first two marriages. I can assure you, it’s not like any movie you’ve seen. And under the guise of plugging my friend’s movie, I will mention that I wrote the tagline on the poster. “A compulsively true comedy.” As I recall, I submitted a few others that I liked, including: “A comedy of the world’s oldest confession.”, “Warning: Contains Full Frontal Honesty” and the more graphic but less ennobling “One man’s search for love: A blow by blow account.”
Good luck Caveh!
METS UPDATE OF THE DAY: DELGADO 1, CHENEY 0
My delight in the Mets' victory over The Washington Nationals yesterday was enhanced by the fact that Dick Cheney had thrown out the first pitch. Not only had he thrown out the first pitch, but he was roundly booed before, during and after throwing out the first pitch. It was like winning a double header while only playing one game. It was cool to see Carlos Deglado, the league's only vocal opponent of the War in Iraq, get a base hit in the first inning. I would love to know if the ball he hit was the same ball the Imperial Veep (and "DUCK!!!!" hunter ) threw out. Since there's no way of getting confirmation of this, I'm going to take the liberty of assuming it to be true. Cause if there's one thing Cheney and Co. have taught us, it's that the facts really don't matter. Belief is all. The Spin shall set you free.
NEWS ITEM OF THE DAY AND ASSOCIATED CRY OVER SPILLED MILK OF THE DAY
Howard Dean: Is the president dishonest or just incompetent?
Salon's Michael Scherer reports on a breakfast with Howard Dean:
Howard Dean called this morning for the Bush administration to declassify a Pentagon report that apparently disproves President Bush's claim that mobile labs found in Iraq constituted "weapons of mass destruction." As the Washington Post reported today, Bush made this statement in 2003, after a team of experts dispatched by the Defense Intelligence Agency concluded that the labs had no military value.
"We are going to call for, probably today, the declassification of the report," Dean said at a private steakhouse breakfast today with reporters. "Everybody can see what's in that report, so everybody can make their own judgments about whether this president and this administration is incompetent or whether he was dishonest. It has to be one of the two."
Teddy Vegas comments on Michael Scherer reporting on a breakfast with Howard Dean:
Not to say I told you so, but to say I told you so all the same, my friend and I did up an entire ad campaign for the 2004 elections based on precisely this inescapable logic. Based on the radical divergence between Bush’s statements and the realities of his administration on matters as diverse as education, health care, the environment and Iraq, we pointed out that there were only two possible explanantions: Dishonesty or incompetence. Each ad presented the statement and the reality and then asked the viewer to decide. Dishonest or incompetent. Either way, it’s time for a leader who leads rather than misleads.
We submitted the ads to the Democratic spin machine (through a friend of a friend contact) and in their infinite wisdom they not only never used them, but never even acknowledged the receipt of our ideas.
Anyhow, I don’t want to add to the general climate of finger pointing and bitchery associated with the still painful and (I still believe) unnecessary defeat, but it came to mind when I saw Howard Dean evoke precisely the same language in this limited (but expansively applicable) context the other day. It just seemed that language, that refrain, that rhetorical battering ram would have serviced Kerry so well in all the debates and on the stump. "You tell me, Mr. President. How do you account for this discrepancy? Is it dishonesty or Incompetence? There are no other alternatives." And on the stump: "There are only two possibilities. Either it is dishonesty or it's incompetence? Either way, we all deserve better. Etc. " Anyhow, don’t get me started. Old wounds. Old rage. Pass the salve of televised sport. Pass the REMOTE!!!!!
Hell with it. Let go, Vegas. Let go. Get the spleen out of spasm. It’s not like I’d be too delighted to see Kerry in office right now anyhow. Such a gutless, wooden turd of a candidate. Plus, had the Democrats won, I would have been denied the satisfaction of seeing the current administration’s ignominious descent...and yet..and yet...
Ok. Enough godawful winge-ing.
APHORISM OF THE DAY:
You’ve gottta accentuate the positive. Or convert to Judaism. :)
DESCRIPTION OF THE DAY:
Don't think of his apartment as a mess. Think of it as a very large "Do Not Throw Out" pile.
THOUGHT OF THE DAY: (Motivated by the aforementioned description of the day).
Order is just chaos in disguise.
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Posted on 4/14/2006
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