THE EPHEMERA AWARDS

IF YOU HAVE EVER FELT OUTSIDE THE SCOPE OF AMERICAN CULTURE, THE ACADEMY AWARDS WILL CAST YOU INTO DARKNESS. UNLESS, OF COURSE, YOU ARE STRONG ENOUGH TO RESIST THE PIPE AND DRUMS. FORTUNATELY, I HAD JUST RETURNED FROM MEXICO, A LAND OF SUBSTANCE AND REALTY, WHEN I WAS FACED WIT THE KODAK THEATRE RIDICULOUSLNESS.

I DON'T THINK I FIT IN HERE ANY MORE. FLOUNCES. PIPERONES. WHAT THE HELL?

I REFER TO ZIHUATANEJO, MEXICO, WHERE I SPENT THE LAST WEKK AMIDST PEOPLE WHO WERE GENUINE, ENLIGHTENED, AND SINCERE ALL THE THINGD THAT THEIR COUSINS IN SANTA MONICA LACK. I MEAN REALLY...AVATAR OR THE HURT LOCKER? WHO GIVES A SHIT? WHO HAS SEEN EITHER? WHY?

I NEED A NEW START.

DON'T YOU?

AH, WEEKEND

I have given up the weekday martini because, frankly, I was missing too many good times, zoned out to the delights of Hendricks, Tanqueray or Bombay. I am now just zoning out on the weekends when a cold, crisp martini still signals a celebration. It's Friday! It's Saturday!

As Ogden Nash put it, in "A Drink with Something in It":

There is something about a Martini,
A tingle remarkably pleasant;
A yellow, a mellow Martini;
I wish I had one at present.
There is something about a Martini,
Ere the dining and dancing begin,
And to tell you the truth,
It is not the vermouth-
I think that perhaps it's the gin.

Is it Friday yet?

SEEMS LIKE OLD TIMES

Though we have begun a new year and a new decade, it sure seems like the same old times to me. As the Washington Post pointed out last week, in the decade between 1999and 2009, our economy created exactly zero job growth. We have a staggering number of people out of work, but Washington bails out the wealthiest bankers while pouring billions down the rat hole of General Motors. There are no plans at all to create new jobs and, while we fight wars on two fronts, we can watch our national treasure travel to China.

When we elected Barack Obama, the nation signaled that it was ready for change, even great change of the FDR kind. Investments in education, green technology, WPA-type programs to employ those who want to work would have been cheered. Instead our leaders bowed to idiots like Joe Lieberman, whom we allowed to gut needed health care reform which, need we remember, has not yet passed.

No one in Washington, especially the President, seems willing to take an unpopular stand. No one cares to admit the realty of a nation which is declining in wealth, youth, vigor and principals. Instead we call for new educational initiatives while we cut funding for education. We rail against bankers while we feed trillions into their coffers.

Once we were a nation that rewarded risk-takers. Now we applaud hypocrites.

CITY SIRENS

I spent six hours with my wife in a hospital emergency room Friday night.
My wife fell on our stairs and, after X-Rays and a CAT scan; they discovered that she had broken two ribs in her back. Morphine and Percocet finally relieved her pain and they sent her home at 4 am
But the experience was humbling. A big city emergency room is an amazing eye-opener. The guy in the room to our right was in critical condition with head wounds from a gunshot and the woman on our left had abdominal pains which the nurse finally figured out was caused by hunger. They gave her a sandwich and released her.
There were 40 emergency cases admitted while we were there last night and Karen said she was almost embarrassed to take up their time with broken ribs caused by her own klutziness.
The people who work in hospitals like the ones who helped us last night-the ambulance guy who lifted my wife out of bed and carried her down the steps to a stretcher-the porter who gently put her in a wheel chair and escorted us to a taxi where he warned the driver not to drive too fast over our streets' old cobblestones-the doctors who looked like they'd had less sleep the we had - they are all such special souls.

DEAR MR. PRESIDENT...

Are we really going to fight over abortion again? Didn't we do that decades ago? Maybe the evangelicals weren't paying attention. So here's a thought: As Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg observed not long ago, abortion rights “center on a woman’s autonomy to determine her life’s course, and thus to enjoy equal citizenship stature.” In a New Yorker essay, Jeffrey Toobin says, "every diminishment of that right diminishes women. With stakes of such magnitude, it is wise to weigh carefully the difference between compromise and surrender."

Mr. President, we know that you are a compromiser and a consensus builder but issues such as this one demand you to stand up, face the heat, and refuse to budge. Let's remember that you won the election and you will win the next one in a landslide if you remain true to the principals that got you there.

THE WARRIOR NATION

I could be wrong about this and, if I am, Gogolplex will certainly set it right, but it seems to me that these United States of America have been at war for my entire lifetime.

That would take us back to 1943 - World War Two, the Greatest Generation and the hundred and seventy five movies that followed it and glorified our part in it. Then came the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the First Gulf War, the Second Gulf War and Afghanistan. Lest we forget, our troops also fought in Somalia, Lebanon, Haiti, Kosovo, Grenada, Cuba and El Salvador during this period, although some would dispute these as "not wars" and others would argue other fine points.

Nevertheless, I think it is fair to say that we have become a Warrior Nation, replacing the Brits, the Germans, the Romans, the Egyptians and even Genghis Khan himself. We are it, Baby. The nastiest bastards in the playpen.

Without this unchallenged record of carnage, would we have the standard of living we – at least some of us - now enjoy? Without Boeing, Dow, Blackstone, Lockheed, DuPont, and the entire military/industrial complex we have built, could we have political correctness, arugula, and vegetarians?

We are truly steeped in blood, brothers.

SCRAPPLE V. APPLE

In Philadelphia yesterday we did the expected and elected Democrats to the positions of District Attorney and City Controller. Across the river in New Jersey they did the unexpected and ousted sitting Governor Jon Corzine, he of the once powerful firm of Goldman Sachs. I believe if Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner had to stand for election, he'd be ousted too, so strong is the public revulsion toward big banks and their big bonused bankers. Bloomberg in the Apple, seems to have beat the trend. In Virginia a Republican was elected Governor and people will read in these events some sort of referrendum on Obama's Presidency thus far. I think this is more about the collision of powerful forces, like the Yankees and the Phillies.

The Apple and the Scrapple meet again tonight in game six of what has been a remarkable World Series. Each team takes turns dominating the other, and every pitch hold the promise of disaster or joy. This is what makes baseball such a great game. It is a lot like politics, although politics has more foul balls.

Go Phils!