Election Day

#317 Election Day

Can’t get used to the election process in this foreign country, Pennsylvania.

First there’s a primary and even if you shell out for school taxes, you can’t vote for school board candidates if you’re a registered independent. Taxation without representation. Unconstitutional in America. Standard operating procedure here.

Then there’s the election itself. The polling place is in a church. Unconstitutional in America. Standard operating procedure here.

Candidates are gathered at the church door. They’re asking for your vote. They have those lawn signs up all over the church yard. Vote for me, vote for me.

In a lot of America, you can’t electioneer within 50 feet of a polling place. Here, they’ll come into the voting booth with you if you like.

Well, it’s not really a voting booth. It’s a voting cubicle. Kind of a cross between Dilbert and water wings. And the voting machine is not really a machine, it’s like a giant Palm Pilot.

They have a funny way of picking judges. Kind of a compromise between elected and appointed. If they’re already on the bench and running for another term, you vote “keep this guy” or “throw this guy out.” No parties here. Unlike the school board primary.

Some other judges DO have political parties. But some candidates are members of one party and voting on the line of the opposition.

One of the judge candidates is standing out in the freezing cold one minute… running to the lady’s room another (people who don’t recognize her wonder why she’s cutting the line. She isn’t. The bathrooms are at mid line.) Then she goes to her SUV and runs the engine. Is it to get warm or is she committing suicide?

Oh, and in that primary, they voted out one of the county commissioners. A guy who campaigned as “someone who listens.” Well, he didn’t listen. He decided to run a write in campaign. Well, not really write-in. Type in. The voting machine’s a giant Palm Pilot, after all. Except you can print off a Palm Pilot, but not the giant ones.

This commissioner guy was seen as “not warm and fuzzy enough.” So he buys a bunch of TV ads in which he talks to us while holding and petting a puppy. Imagine the outtakes on that one. The puppy probably tried to get the guy’s finger and they had to drug him between takes.

And it probably wet the commissioner, too. Guy has a PhD. That means he thinks he walks on water. (It’s a requirement.) Walking on water is one thing. Remaining dry while a puppy wets you is yet another matter.

One of the ousted school board guy also is waging a type-in campaign. He and his running mate look and talk like the two guys in the cranberry ads. Except the guys in the cranberry ads are actors, and these guys really talk like that.

The brilliant local newspaper has run a fearless editorial, describing some candidates but not endorsing any. Makes perfect sense. Newspaper endorsements are meaningless.

The dust will clear in awhile. The results will be announced. Nothing will change.

Makes it easier to miss America.

I'm Wes Richards, my opinions are my own, but you're welcome to them.

(c) 2007 WJR

Nixon In 2008

#316 Nixon in ‘08

Yeah, he may be dead, and he may have already been elected twice, but so what?

Nixon for President in 2008!

Iraq? That’s only Viet Nam-Light. He got us out of there. He can get us out of Iraq. So what if we bomb Cambodia (for old time’s sake) Syria and Lebanon.

Most of his flaws have become virtues.

Anti-Semitic? Sure. But Arabs are Semites, too. And we need a guy like that in the White House.

Anti-communist? Sure. Both real and imagined. Hugo Chavez, watch out. Here comes Dick!

The guy opened up China. China, a huge and sprawling country, full of …. Full of…. Chinese people. Just think of what he could do in Iran!

Who gave us China? Nixon.

Who gave us affirmative action?

Who gave us the EPA?

Who gave us price controls? Nixon.

Here’s a guy who could talk to Exxon in its own language. Nixon.

Nixon. Endorsed by the Teamsters’ Union.

Our kinda liberal.

Knew the difference between church and state.

Oh, so now you’re going to mention all his little character flaws. Think of them as challenges.

Watergate? A third rate burglary. Plus, we already know Deep Throat was making up all that stuff just because he didn’t get promoted to FBI Director.

Spiro Agnew? Well, he probably was the worst single personnel decision, but we learn from our mistakes.

Oops. Maybe not:

G. Harold Carswell for Supreme Court? Who knew how good he’d look compared with the charmers who’ve been added lately? Plus, we knew in advance he was crooked, and we could have watched him.

“Your President is not a crook.” Oh, sure he is. Don’t get defensive, Dickey.

Cambodia? Laos? Forget about it.

A staff that could have been recruited directly from Club Fed?

A brother who runs hamburger stands? (An elite club. Look at the Clinton and Carter brothers.)

Haven’t you had enough faux Texas, Connecticut-born cowboy who drives a pickup truck like an illegal immigrant? Haven’t you had enough hairspray, pant-suits, TV actors, flying saucer spotters and their sound a-likes and wannabes?

Don’t you want a guy who can speak the English language, who was born in a REAL state, who’s sliminess is all out in public and a Republican who enacts a lot of Democratic programs?

Nixon. This is a guy we need… a guy who understands what America’s all about.

It’s okay that he’s dead. He’s still a better President than anyone else who’s running.

And should there be another 9/11, you won’t find Tricky Dick ignoring it and going off to an elementary school to prove to America he can read.

I'm Wes Richards, my opinions are my own, but you're welcome to them.

(c) 2007 WJR

Cosmetic Brain Surgery

#315 Cosmetic Brain Surgery

It’s the wave of the future. It’s bigger than Botox, Lasic eye surgry; even those press-on nails kind of thingies they put on your teeth to make you look younger. And it leaves ordinary plastic surgery in the dust – in the stone age.

Ever see a brain? Really ugly. A mass of gelatinous goo held together by a thin skin.

It’s not like your brain is on display anywhere. No one really sees it. But the cosmetic brain surgeons have a workaround for that. Instead of replacing the chunk of your skull they remove for the operation, they install a transparent carbon fiber cover. Thus, you can show the world your newly redecorated brain.

For those who want less than “the works,” you can have this done one lobe at a time. Pretty up the goo and show it off to friend and foe alike.

If you are reputed to be the neighborhood halfwit, you can prove conclusively that you are not. That’s a whole brain under that transparent cranium.

And if the prettied up brain ever shows signs of reverting to form, you can go in for a quick and easy lobe lift. The easily removable poly carbon yarmulke can be set aside, the lift accomplished in under two hours and the topper replaced, good as new.

Right now, these procedures are the exclusive purview of the Park Avenue brain surgeons. But no worries. Some of the lower priced medical services are already working on their own versions.

Instead of Park & 72^nd, you’ll soon be able to go to Super 8 Surgical Suites or Hilton Garden Hospitals or even Gas’n’Go fuel station-convenience store and surgery centers throughout the Northeast and Upper Midwest.

One caution, though. There are side effects. In the latest FDA study, some patients have shown a predisposition to hallucination, constipation, nausea, sleeplessness, heart arrhythmia, headache, neuritis and neuralgia.

Well, that’s not exactly ONE caution, now is it?

Also, most health insurance plans don’t cover this stuff. But that’s a small price to pay for the self-esteem building pleasure that comes from a cosmetically enhanced brain.

But wait. There’s more. If you really ARE the neighborhood half-wit, you can get a new, saline enhanced brain implant to go with your lobe lift. You won’t be any smarter, but you’ll have what appears to be a normally large brain instead of that skimpy little pile of neurons you’re waltzing around with now.

If implants are good for your smile and for other parts of your anatomy, why not upstairs, where the real action is (or would be if you weren’t said halfwit.)

Poor scarecrow. If he were only alive today, he wouldn’t have had to make the long, tedious, and apparently dangerous trip to the Emerald City. He could just head off for Surgery Suites by Marriott, and have the whole thing done right near home.

There’s a long list of candidates for this stuff, largely ignored. People who need this service aren’t generally aware it’s out there.

I'm Wes Richards, my opinions are my own, but you're welcome to them.

(c) 2007 WJR

Porter Wagoner/Robert Goulet

#314 Porter Wagoner/Robert Goulet

No one seemed to see the irony in this. In Nashville, they were busy inducting the latest members of the Country Music Hall of Fame. Guys like Vince Gil and Mel Tillis and Shotgun Red.

Down the road apiece, as they are thought to say down there, another member of the Hall, Porter Wagoner was taking his last breath. Cancered lungs’ll do that after 80 years.

You’ve never heard of him, right? Chances are you haven’t because he never got into the pop music scene. And he hadn’t had a hit in more than 20 years, although that didn’t stop him from touring and playing before pretty good crowds. (The country audience’ll do that.)

There are a lot of reasons to remember this guy fondly. First was his music. Second was his pioneering use of television. The videotaped shows from the 1960s were in black and white (more about which in a moment,) and they were not exactly lessons in how to present or edit music on television. They were radio shows in which the pictures didn’t really matter.

But his was the first of the syndicated, videotaped country music shows, and it ran for 20 years or so before they killed it.

Third was Dolly Parton, who may or may not have gotten where she is on her own, but who got a big boost from Wagoner, who was a mega star back then, made her his partner and expanded her repertoire (no Dolly jokes, please.)

Some of today’s country music types are called “hat acts.” That’s because they wear hats.

Wagoner was a “suit act.” He came from an era where performers wore those Liberace-like rhinestone jackets and pants. This is where black and white TV was useless. Those costumes were elaborate and expensive and colorful. Turquoise. Purple. Yellow. Stuff you could see from the back row, lest you not recognize the pompadour at the microphone.

Hank Snow, Webb Pierce, Hank Thompson, Hank Garland (almost everyone was named “Hank” in those days.) Ernest Tubb, Johnny Cash (before the man-in-black thing started.) Elvis. They were all suit acts. Kept the crummy rhinestone makers in business practically single handedly.

Today’s guys don’t know what to do with a rhinestone.

Porter was, late in his career, a nostalgia act. He could have stayed on top. But he didn’t know how to sing through his nose.

That was his professional downfall.

His personal downfall probably was cigarettes.

Today, 80 isn’t old.

Neither is 73, which is how far Robert Goulet got before cashing it in a few days later. Goulet rocketed to stardom around the same time as Wagoner, the late 1950s, after he was cast opposite Hepburn in “Camelot.”

What a voice. What an actor. And commercial comic, in just these last few months.

Goulet had pulmonary fibrosis. Two stars. Two lung deaths. Too bad for the rest of us.

I'm Wes Richards, my opinions are my own, but you're welcome to them.

(c) 2007 WJR

Year Three

#313 Year Three

This is the second anniversary of this blog, although similar material has been running out of the fingers and sometimes the brain for far decades longer. The blog and its immediate predecessor, the weekly Bloomberg essay/column/commentary had a few rules. Amazingly, none have been violated.

1. Nothing over 600 words except the annual WestraDamus Retrodictions. Five hundred is ideal.

2. No consecutive serious pieces.

3. No first person singular.

4. No phone, no pool, no pets. (Oops. That’s from “King of the Road” by Roger Miller.)

5. Resist pressure to name drop.

6. No subject is taboo.

7. Reality is funnier than fiction.

Not easy for a career contrarian to follow.

Readership spiked when there was a link here from The Kingsland Report, which no longer exists (Jim Kingsland decided to kill that when he got a real job.)

Everyone who’s been a reporter for awhile decries that state of the art, wonders why people don’t like us and then keeps doing what we get paid to do. It’s a living. Most places, it’s not a GOOD living. But it’s a living.

MYTH #1: “The Liberal Media.” Are you kidding? This phrase was originally coined by a large Midwestern newspaper. It referred to the New York Times, NBC and CBS. What those three things had in common was they were run or owned by Jewish men.

Today’s New York Times doesn’t know what it is. CBS is in the hands of a guy who basically runs movie houses and has no politics. ABC is owned by Disney (and is there anything less liberal than that? Yes, the great social activists and fellow travelers at General Electric, which owns NBC.

CNN? Ted Turner is a liberal billionaire. But he wasn’t when he started the network.

News Corp? That’s pretty liberal. They own Fox, the New York Post, the Weekly Standard, Sky News and countless other left wing propaganda machines.

Plus, if no one’s paying any attention to these outlets, who cares what side they’re on.

Work in a major television news room for ten minutes and you’ll see that they’re lucky to get ANYTHING on, let alone something with a slant in any direction.

MYTH 2: Just that facts, ma’am.

Try to get information out of a “news source” and chances are you end up with gibberish that resemble facts in form, but not content.

Example: the people who make Tasers just came out with a decorator model stun gun for civilians. There are places you know you can buy ‘em legally. Texas, Alabama, Mississippi, Arizona, probably Utah.

How about here in the wilds of Pennsylvania? Don’t know. Can’t get a straight answer out of the DA’s office or the cops.

MYTH THREE: Names make news. Nah. Not usually. Except if you’re Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, O.J. Simpson, Lindsay Lohan, Jennifer Lopez or a professional athlete on steroids.

So, we preserver into year three.

I'm Wes Richards, my opinions are my own, but you're welcome to them.

(c) 2007 WJR

The Spies

#312b The Spies

This was back during World War II. Maxie got a few bucks, working as a Fuller Brush Man in places like Maspeth and Ozone Park. So we went and got this radio.

Gorgeous Radio. From the Lafayette Radio guys. A record changer on the top. A huge loudspeaker, and a receiver that got both regular radio and shortwave.

Gorgeous radio. Deep red-brown mahogany cabinet. Automatic tuning. The works!

One day Fat Chickie comes to the door. He’s the repair guy from Lafayette. Says he has to make a “slight adjustment” to the radio. Maxie says there’s nothing wrong. Gets everything just fine. Plays the records just fine. Fat Chickie says “no, office says I gotta make some adjustments.”

Okay. In he comes with his tool box and his bald head and his gut. Squats down behind the radio, fiddles with a few things and then says “okay, all fixed.” Maxie says “let me try it.”

Now, the shortwave, which worked fine this morning, isn’t working so well. In fact it’s not working at all.

“What did you do to my fancy radio?” he asks.

“I disabled the shortwave. Orders. Sorry.”

“Orders? That’s what I left in Germany.”

“If you’re still here after the war, we’ll come put it back,” says Fat Chickie on his way out.

Maxie the German Spy. A US citizen, a Jew, a refugee, and a Holocaust escapee. Pretty likely guy to be getting secret messages from the Third Reich, right?

The war ended. Maxie was never arrested. Fat Chickie never came back to fix the shortwave.

Was Maxie a spy? Bombs in the Fuller Brush sample case?

Don’t know. He didn’t talk much – at least not about that stuff. But probably not.

No Department of Homeland Security then, either. Just good citizens like the guys at Lafayette Radio doing their best to protect the US of A against Nazi terrorists. So what if a few innocents were inconvenienced!

Now, it’s 2007. And in the condo across the street, a lovely and happy couple. Can’t tell you their names. National security, you know, He’s “H” and she’s “F.” That’ll have to be enough. And guess where they’re from. Iran!

And they’re obviously spies. Here’s how you can tell. He’s friendly with everyone. And she doesn’t “cover.” Plus, they keep their lights on very very late at night. Probably sending secret messages back to the Ayatollah.

He’s handsome. She’s hot. Obviously a distraction. We know what they’re up to. Gathering data and tracking the movements of the rest of us. Waiting for the day the nukes come sailing in from Tehran.

Chertoff and those guys aren’t as smart as Fat Chickie and the Lafayette Radio Company crowd. They knew when they faced the enemy, and they knew what to do. They didn’t wait for the U-Boats to come ashore in Sag Harbor. They went out there and cut off enemy lines of communication before there was any damage.

But we vigilant neighbors are at the ready. We have our eye on you, Persian devils! (Especially you, Lady Short Shorts.)

I'm Wes Richards, my opinions are my own, but you're welcome to them.

(c) 2007 WJR

The Organization Woman

#311 The Organization Woman

Organized. Gotta get organized. Gotta straighten up this mess. Put things in order. Make it easier to use.

Many of us used to think that “organized” meant having your stuff around so you could easily get to the things you needed when you needed them.

Unpaid bills on this corner of the desk top. Pens over here. Telephone over there. That kind of thing.

But there’s a new definition. It says organization is having everything look neat. The notion of “use” doesn’t arise. If it looks good, it’s organized. If it’s neat, it’s organized. If it is uncluttered, it’s organized.

Since joining forces with the Organization Woman, the office never looked so good. Books are in size places (used to use author or subject classification,) and there are far fewer of them.

There’s almost nothing on the desk. No pens. No papers. Just the computer and the phone and one of those big box office supply store “organizer” thingies in which you can store a checkbook and maybe a couple of envelopes.

In order to get at anything necessary, you have to move ten other things. And it’s not just the desk. It’s the rooms. And there are a lot of rooms.

Want paper towels? Why they’re in the paper towel holder. And where is that? One’s in plain sight in the kitchen. (that’ll soon be “corrected.” The other is under the bathroom sink.

Think about it. Why do you use paper towels? Because something wet has to be dried. Like, say, the washable electric shaver. Gotta remember to open the cabinet door, remove the makeup carrier, get the paper towel holder out, close the door, use, clean and wipe the shaver, then restore the paper towel holder beneath the cabinet, reposition the the make up caddy (which side is “out?) and most of all, CLOSE THE CABINET DOOR.

The water glasses are in a kitchen cabinet. We use them at three meals a day. They look great in the cabinet. See ‘em? Right there, behind the never used tea cups. And when you’re finished removing the tea cups, getting out the glasses, replacing the teacups, don’t forget to CLOSE THE CABINET DOOR.

Dishtowels, dishes, laundry products, all in a row. Perfect. On view. If Queen Elizabeth should make an unannounced visit, she’d be pleased.

Good thing Liz doesn’t have to get her own glass or paper towel.

It’s all perfectly organized. Until it isn’t.

The Organization Woman is also the Handy Mover. Points are given if you can spot which items she has moved from one perfectly good location to another.

Even the flowers are organized. (I HATE fresh flowers. They’re way too much work. Let’s get artificial flowers. Followed by: Those artificial flowers never change. They have no life. Let’s get rid of them and get some real ones…. Followed by…..)

Those of us who are slobs at heart have found a solution, or at least a partial one. Put stuff in drawers in a way that they remain accessible and useful and useable.

But to keep the secret secret, don’t forget to CLOSE THE DRAWERS and hope no one looks.

I'm Wes Richards, my opinions are my own, but you're welcome to them.

(c) 2007 WJR