The saddest number

4000

What is Love?

Hell of a title for this blog, but there it is. To be frank, I'm not sure if i understand love. What it is, how it happens, but I'm pretty sure it has something to do with THIS.

** I am a moody brute, but I'm not easily given over to bouts of sentimentality. Regardless, this audio clip always ALWAYS reduces me to tears. Have tissues ready.



“If we’re going anywhere, we’re going down the aisle, because I’m too tired, too sick, and too sore to do any other damn thing.”
-Danny Perasa

Why is she still in?

HALPERIN’S TAKE: Painful Things Hillary Clinton Knows — Or Should Know

1. She can’t win the nomination without overturning the will of the elected delegates, which will alienate many Democrats.
2. She can’t win the nomination without a bloody convention battle — after which, even if she won, history and many Democrats would cast her as a villain.
3. Catching up in the popular vote is not out of the question — but without re-votes in Florida and Michigan it will be almost as impossible as catching up in elected delegates.
4. Nancy Pelosi and other leading members of Congress don’t think she can win and want her to give up. Same with superdelegate-to-the-stars Donna Brazile.
5. Obama’s skilled, close-knit staff can do things like silently kill re-votes in Florida and Michigan and not pay a political price.
6. Many of her supporters — and even some of her staffers — would be relieved (and even delighted) if she quit the race; none of his supporters or staff feel that way. Some think she just might throw in the towel in June if it appears efforts to fight on would hurt Obama’s general election chances.
7. The Rev. Wright story notwithstanding, the media still wants Obama to be the nominee — and that has an impact every day.
8. Obama might not be able to talk that well about the new global economy, but she (and McCain) can’t either.
9. Many of the remaining prominent superdelegates want to be for Obama and she (and Harold Ickes) are just barely keeping them from making public commitments to him.
10. She can’t publicly say more than 2% of all the things she would like to say about race, electability, beating McCain and experience.
11. If she somehow found a way to win the nomination, she would have to offer Obama the veep slot, and she doesn’t want to do that.
12. This is a change election, and Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton can never truly be change.
13. Obama is having fun most days, and she isn’t.
14. Even though her campaign staff is having more fun than it has for a long time, there’s hardly anyone there who, given half a chance, wouldn’t slit Mark Penn’s throat — and such internal dissension won’t help her in the home stretch.

LaMont and Fry Dance a Similar Step

This weekend as I was extolling the merits of a Bar with a jukebox, a misguided and terrifyingly youthful person attempted to force me to dance. This was not a dance-bar, or an anthro, or club, or discotheque, cotillion, ball, dance, danse, recital or strip-club. Nothing about this watering hole spoke "Dance" to me, but there i was, being prodded by someone who had obviously no idea what a drag dancing is to me. As is often the case, my academic godfather, Mr. Stephen Fry suffers from the same affliction, and also suffers from danceless music syndrome as well as an unhealthy love of the Swedish group ABBA.

I'll allow the master to say it hisself:

Bathing with Bierko

Oh my god.
Ohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygod.
Oh My god.

Wow.

Oh, Danny Boy...

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

THESE ATTACK ADS MUST STOP!





O'bama 08': "Tiocfaidh Ar La."

Why the Irish, and Why Saint Patrick's Day?

"What are you?" is a retarded and incredibly offensive question that I get asked way too often. What people are really asking, of course is "What's your ethnicity?" or if you want to be crude, "You seem white, but you're too dark. Explain."

Nothing seems to bring out this retarded line of questioning more than my love and celebration of St. Patrick's day. When push comes to shove, i don't see any reason why i should explain my love of a "Drinking Holiday" and yet, i feel strongly enough about my journey into the struggles of the Irish people to give a little explanation.

My general anglophilia was sparked at an early age by a grandfather who embraced his Scotch heritage, no matter how distant. Yes, the name "Lamont" is of scottish ancestry and if you dig far back enough even Irish, but let's face it. I'm as Mexican as a tamale being sold out of a cooler. Being a weird little Mexican kid in Colorado Springs with an "Abuelito" provided collection of Scottish tin soldiers, not to mention endless history books and an early exposure to war movies like ZULU, LIVES OF A BENGAL LANCER, THE FOUR FEATHERS, GUNGA DIN, and and endless array of pith-helmeted books and stories, it wasn't very long before you had a fifth grader who cherished his copy of "The Illustrated Charge of The Light Brigade".

"Half a League, half a league, half a league onward!"

Its no wonder I can't remember where my keys are most of the time.

It was around the time of what i consider my political awakening when my shockingly conservative hometown finally started to get aggravating, that I decided to champion liberal causes and piss everybody off. At this time, my family was embroiled in an epic argument regarding religion, and I was forced to attend confirmation classes and "Go through the motions" despite the fact that i had been confirmed when I was 7 by a Cardinal, no less. So my Catholicism and liberalism were bound for a head-on collision, and that collision took place in the newspapers and literature of Irish republicanism and "The Troubles".

I'll spare you the history lesson, and leave that to the brilliant and thorough documentary series I've posted below. Suffice to say that the treatment of the Irish at the hands of the British even up to the mid to late eighties forced me to rethink my romantic views on the Empire, and served as a reminder that even some of my most seemingly benign childhood affections were childish, and the world we live in is far more complex than is dreamt of when reading of Gordon in the Sudan.

So why the Irish? Because they have been a historically mistreated and sidelined people, who have struggled for equal rights and a nation longer than any other people on earth. Why St. Patrick's? It is a chance to celebrate the underdog, the poets, the dreamers and rebels who will hopefully make Ireland a nation once more.

Now, for the history lesson. Below is the entire 8 Part series of THE TROUBLES. It is a history of the epic struggle of the Irish people for a free, complete, and sovereign nation from the Easter Rebellion of 1916 to the Hunger strikes of the 1980's. hopefully it will help you understand why the music at my St. Pat's parties sometimes carry a melancholy or defiant tone, and why some decorations have a Fenian slant.


"They have nothing in their whole imperial arsenal that can break the spirit of one Irishman who doesn't want to be broken." - Bobby Sands MP

<

Keith tells us how it is.

Ouch.

Olbermann: Senator, you must correct the wrong done to Obama
SPECIAL COMMENT
By Keith Olbermann
Anchor, 'Countdown'

By way of necessary preface, President and Sen. Clinton, and the senator’s mother, and the senator’s brother, were of immeasurable support to me at the moments when these very commentaries were the focus of the most surprise, the most uncertainty, and the most anger. My gratitude to them is abiding.

Also, I am not here endorsing Sen. Obama’s nomination, nor suggesting it is inevitable.

Thus I have fought with myself over whether or not to say anything.

Senator, as it has reached its apex in their tone-deaf, arrogant and insensitive reaction to the remarks of Geraldine Ferraro, your own advisers are slowly killing your chances to become president.

Senator, their words, and your own, are now slowly killing the chances for any Democrat to become president.

In your tepid response to this Ferraro disaster, you may sincerely think you are disenthralling an enchanted media and righting an unfair advance bestowed on Sen. Obama.

You may think the matter has closed with Rep. Ferraro’s bitter, almost threatening resignation.

But in fact, Senator, you are now campaigning as if Barack Obama were the Democrat and you were the Republican.

As Shakespeare wrote, Senator, that way madness lies.

You have missed a critical opportunity to do what was right.

No matter what Ms. Ferraro now claims, no one took her comments out of context.

She had made them on at least three separate occasions, then twice more on television this morning.

Just hours ago, on NBC Nightly News, she denied she had made the remarks in an interview; only at a paid political speech.

In fact, the first time she spoke them, was 10 days before the California newspaper published them, not in a speech, but in a radio interview.

On Feb. 26, “If Barack Obama were a white man, would we be talking about this, as a potential real problem for Hillary? If he were a woman of any color, would he be in this position that he’s in? Absolutely not.”

The context was inescapable.

Two minutes earlier, a member of Sen. Clinton’s Finance Committee, one of her “Hill-Raisers,” had bemoaned the change in allegiance by superdelegate John Lewis from Clinton to Obama, and the endorsement of Obama by Sen. Dodd.

“I look at these guys doing it,” she had said, “and I have to tell you, it’s the guys sticking together.”

A minute after the “color” remarks, she was describing herself as having been chosen for the 1984 Democratic ticket purely as a woman politician, purely to make history.

She was, in turn, making a blind accusation of sexism and dismissing Sen. Obama’s candidacy as nothing more than an Equal Opportunity stunt.

The next day she repeated her comments to a reporter from the newspaper in Torrance, Calif.

“If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.”

And when this despicable statement, ugly in its overtones, laughable in its weak grip of facts and moronic in the historical context, when it floats outward from the Clinton campaign like a poison cloud, what do the advisers have their candidate do?

Do they have Sen. Clinton herself compare the remark to Al Campanis talking on Nightline on Jackie Robinson day about how blacks lacked the necessities to become baseball executives, while she points out that Barack Obama has not gotten his 1,600 delegates as part of some kind of affirmative action plan?

Do they have Sen. Clinton note that her own brief period in elected office is as irrelevant to the issue of judgment as is Sen. Obama’s while she points out that FDR had served only six years as a governor and state senator before he became president?

Or that Teddy Roosevelt had four-and-a-half years before the White House?

Or that Woodrow Wilson had two years and six weeks?

Or Richard Nixon, 14, and Calvin Coolidge, 25?

Do these advisers have Sen. Clinton invoke Samantha Power, gone by sunrise after she used the word “monster” and have Sen. Clinton say, “This is how I police my campaign, and this is what I stand for,” while she fires former Congresswoman Ferraro from any role in the campaign?

No.

Somebody tells her that simply disagreeing with and rejecting the remarks is sufficient.

And that she should then call them “regrettable,” a word that should make any Democrat retch.

And that she should then try to twist them, first into some pox-on-both-your-houses plea to "stick to the issues," and then to let her campaign manager try to bend them beyond all recognition, into Sen. Obama’s fault.

And thus these advisers give Congresswoman Ferraro nearly a week in which to send Sen. Clinton’s campaign back into the vocabulary ... of David Duke.

“Any time anybody does anything that in any way pulls this campaign down and says let’s address reality and the problems we’re facing in this world, you’re accused of being racist, so you have to shut up.

“Racism works in two different directions. I really think they’re attacking me because I’m white.

“How’s that?”

How’s that?

Apart from sounding exactly like Rush Limbaugh attacking the black football quarterback Donovan McNabb?

Apart from sounding exactly like what Ms. Ferraro said about another campaign, nearly 20 years ago?

“President Reagan suggested Tuesday that people don’t ask Jackson tough questions because of his race. And former representative Geraldine A. Ferraro (D-N.Y.) said Wednesday that because of his ‘radical’ views, ‘if Jesse Jackson were not black, he wouldn’t be in the race.’”

So, apart from sounding like insidious racism that is at least two decades old?

Apart from rendering ridiculous Sen. Clinton’s shell-game about choosing Obama as vice president?

Apart from this evening’s resignation letter?

“I am stepping down from your finance committee so I can speak for myself and you can continue to speak for yourself about what is at stake in this campaign.

“The Obama campaign is attacking me to hurt you.”

Apart from all that?

Well. It sounds as if those advisers want their campaign to be associated with those words, and the cheap, ignorant, vile racism that underlies every syllable.

And Geraldine Ferraro has just gone free-lance.

Sen. Clinton:This is not a campaign strategy. This is a suicide pact.

This week alone, your so-called strategists have declared that Sen. Obama has not yet crossed the “commander-in-chief threshold.”

But he might be your choice to be vice president, even though a quarter of the previous sixteen vice presidents have become commander-in-chief during the greatest kind of crisis this nation can face: a mid-term succession.

But you’d only pick him if he crosses that threshold by the time of the convention.

But if he does cross that threshold by the time of the convention, he will only have done so sufficiently enough to become vice president, not president.

Senator, if the serpentine logic of your so-called advisers were not bad enough ...

Now, thanks to Geraldine Ferraro, and your campaign’s initial refusal to break with her, and your new relationship with her, now more disturbing still is her claim that she can now “speak for herself” about her vision of Sen. Obama as some kind of embodiment of a quota.

If you were to seek Obama as a vice president, it would be, to Ms. Ferraro, some kind of social engineering gesture, some kind of racial make-good.

Do you not see, Senator?

To Sen. Clinton’s supporters, to her admirers, to her friends for whom she is first choice, and to her friends for whom she is second choice, she is still letting herself be perceived as standing next to, and standing by, racial divisiveness and blindness.

And worst yet, after what President Clinton said during the South Carolina primary, comparing the Obama and Jesse Jackson campaigns; a disturbing, but only borderline remark.

After what some in the black community have perceived as a racial undertone to the “3 A.M.” ad, a disturbing but only borderline interpretation ...

And after that moment’s hesitation in her own answer on 60 Minutes about Obama’s religion; a disturbing, but only borderline vagueness ...

After those precedents, there are those who see a pattern, false or true.

After those precedents, there are those who see an intent, false or true.

After those precedents, there are those who see the Clinton campaign’s anything-but-benign neglect of this Ferraro catastrophe, falsely or truly, as a desire to hear the kind of casual prejudice that still haunts this society voiced and to not distance the campaign from it.

To not distance you from it, Senator!

To not distance you from that which you as a woman, and Sen. Obama as an African-American, should both know and feel with the deepest of personal pain!

Which you should both fight with all you have!

Which you should both ensure has no place in this contest!

This, Sen. Clinton, is your campaign, and it is your name.

Grab the reins back from whoever has led you to this precipice, before it is too late.

Voluntarily or inadvertently, you are still awash in this filth.

Your only reaction has been to disagree, reject, and to call it regrettable.

Her only reaction has been to brand herself as the victim, resign from your committee and insist she will continue to speak.

Unless you say something definitive, Senator, the former congresswoman is speaking with your approval.

You must remedy this.

And you must reject and denounce Geraldine Ferraro.

A Menudo

I consider myself a bit of a culinary dandy. An epicurean fop if you will, but certainly not a food snob. I was brought up in a house with too many Brussels Sprouts and Cauliflower, and simply no Velveeta. My youth was spent in a losing battle against liver and beets, and with the fascist motto "Fragen Sie, was es ist, nachdem Sie es essen" which loosely translates to "You may ask what it is, only after you ingest it." With this motto, my parents forged the complex palate that i possess today. Able to consume Oaxacan crickets, Stinky Cheeses, and Super Sized meals and enjoy them deeply. It was during a session of similar foodie bragging that I found myself confronted with the question "What don't you eat?". I thought at length. My immediate reaction is to proclaim my hatred for black licorice. Anis, Anisette, whatever the hell you want to call it, I hate it. I'll drink it, or ingest it, but with hate in my heart for the flavor starved medieval bumpkins who decided to gag down this garbage in the first place. A shame really, that Absinthe insists on using said flavor. But surely that is not it. I'm sure there's something else i can't stomach. Truth be told, I take great pride in forcing myself to enjoy certain foods i have previously found distasteful. I see a dislike of a food as a shortcoming of my own and not a fault of the comestible in question. I have as of recent conquered my former nemesis Cole Slaw, and Root Beer also fell to the more forgiving palate of my third decade. Yes, I am a man content to shove any old thing down his gullet.

I do however, have a gripe- with tripe.

Its not that the flavor offends. Its not even the appalling honeycomb texture and the bristles. God knows if texture and appearance were the defining vote of consumption, then oysters and hot dogs would be exempt my gorging, and they most certainly are not. So if not the flavor or the appearance and texture, then what is it? Why Alf? Why won't you eat tripe? The world wants to know!!

Well, I don't like fighting with my food. Chewing through tripe is one the most awful, time-consuming acts of flavorless banality you could sit down and inflict on yourself.

Take Menudo:



The famed Mexican dish was made popular as a hangover cure in rural Mexico. My guess is that the undigestible bits of rubbery gut served as some sort of sponge for much of the leftover pulque from the previous night's fiesta. Regardless, I am convinced that the ingestion of this strange dish was more out of necessity than an actual taste for chunks of tripe. I feel perfectly comfortable in lumping all tripe dishes, worldwide into the category of inedible nonsense. I do offer one caveat. Andouille, Andouillette and Butifarra are sausages that contain tripe, and as we all know as long as its in an edible animal casing ALL food is game.

There are a few other foods I consider fighters that I am sometimes wary of eating. Razzberries, Blackberries, and certain nuts are such a hassle to eat because of their seeds or casing, that i sometimes think twice beofre noshing on them. Tripe however, I downright avoid. The day tripe is tasty, I'll chew it down like a meaty gummy worm, but no amount of lime juice and cilantro will ever be enough for me to sit at a bowl of Menudo for hours trying to hock back that rubbery mess.

Gnarly

The new Gnarls Barkley video was banned from MTV because it causes seizures.
They must mean Seizures of awesomeness.