FROM CLIENT 9 TO MARCH 8. (Plus an exciting new feature!).

NEW FEATURE OF THE DAY: THE TEDDY VEGAS CELEBRITY RESEMBLANCE TRIANGULATION SERVICE.

Send me a picture of someone and I'll name three celebrities with some relevant dimension of physical similitude. For example, take Eliot Spitzer's wife.

The sides of that scalene of similitude would be:

Jennifer Aniston
Edie Falco
Jennifer Aniston's mother.

CLIENT 9 COMMENTARY OF THE DAY:

Well, I guess there were some impulses the Governor just couldn't govern. (Come to think of it: Why does that always seem to be the case with Governors?)

Now there are lots of people in the NY State government who want to write NY State's number one John (even if only #9 client) a Dear John letter.

My basic observation: I guess the only difference between self-righteous, moralizing Democrats and self-righteous, moralizing Republicans is that the former get caught with straight prostitutes and the latter with gay prostitutes. 

I read that Spitzer stated, "I have disappointed and failed to live up to the standard I expected of myself."

What was not reported was that he continued:

"As a long practicing attorney, and a former Attorney General, I was intimately familiar with these kinds of operations and with the investigations into them.  How could I have failed to foresee the possibility of wiretapping?  Not to have foreseen that possibility and not to have insisted on direct person to person contact in purchasing the services of high class sex workers  was simply…well, it was simply inexcusable.  And for that I will never be able to forgive myself."

SAY WHAAAA??????? MOMENT OF THE DAY:

Just read the following headline "Cheney going to Mideast to push for peace." Wait a minute? Is it April Fools Day already? No? Hmmm. I haven't read the New Testament lately, but is that one of the signs of the Apocalypse? I mean Cheney only goes places to push for war, right? Yup, I just checked out the Bible. In order for the Second Coming to take place, the 12 tribes have to return to Israel and Cheney has to go to Jerusalem to push for peace. Wow. Put your affairs in order folks.

POLITICAL OBSERVATIONS OF THE DAY:

1)

Noam Chomsky and the Neo-Cons are just opposite sides of the same fundamental error. To wit, the need to clearly separate light from darkness. To valorize one thing through the denigration of the other. In the Neo-Con vision, America is the source of all global good. In Chomsky's case, by a far too facile inversion, America is the source of all global evil. It really doesn't make for very enlightened or interesting discourse. I wish I were still 22 years old and believed in the grand teleology of Hegelian Dialectics--in which case I could imagine this to be some vital moment of thesis and antithesis awaiting, through the glorious alchemy of determinate negation, the decisive moment of sublation (Aufhebung) and synthesis. As it is, I just see it as a pretty boring non dialogue. Forty miles of bad pavement on the road to nowhere.

2)

Hillary.  The audacity of audacity. 

To offer the candidate who's ahead of you in both the polls and the delegate count the honor of serving as your VP? Baby's got chutzpah. Or at least a deficit of shame. It's particularly ironic since she's been claiming as the cornerstone of her campaign that Obama is simply neither ready or qualified for the job.

PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATION OF THE DAY:

There is --particularly when you're young--a liberating power to the recognition of universal narcissism.  It makes you less self conscious to realize that while you're busy worrying about how you're coming across in a social situation , the other people are really focusing on how they're coming across and barely noticing you.  There is a freedom and power in this awareness.

VIDEO IDEAS OF THE DAY:

a)

Video Idea:  A stand-up comedian is making dick-ish, guy jokes about his ex girlfriend and then jthe truth of their break up actually hits him and h just breaks down crying.

b)

People literally holding their or someone else's heads up to the Zombie's song (originally The Argent Song) "Hold your head up...woah...Hold your head up...woah...Hold your head up...woah...Hold your head up!" The heads could be attached or not attached. But if they are not attached to a body, it could be pretty creepy.

LFAQs of the DAY:

Does Bush still believe he can win the war?

Does OJ still believe he will find the killer?

Does Hillary still believe she found her voice in New Hampshire?

Who was Client 10...and is he feeling a little neglected right now?

Was the market rallying today on the Fed move or was it just Spitzer-based schadenfreude?

Who are you voting for: the crazy old guy, the muslim terrorist or the castrating bitch? (Oh wait: This is for LESS frequently asked questions. Sorry.)

QUOTE OF THE DAY:

"If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position."

-Geraldine Ferraro

What does this even mean? Is she trying to say he has an advantage because, as we all know from our history, black men always enjoy an advantage in national electoral campaigns?

I guess she's implying that if Hillary were a man, she wouldn't be in this position either.

It's not only incomprehensibly crass and stupid: it's sort of just plain incomprehensible.

Anyhow, I guess she's now in a lot of hot water. And I guess all we can say is:

Geraldine: If you were a smart person, you wouldn't be in this position.

PEEVE OF THE DAY:

In the course of a 15 minute meeting, I endured the following malopropisms, neologisms and solecisms. Ok. Make that the following linguistic turds:

"Transcends" was used to mean "pervades."
"Infer" was used to mean "imply."
"Imply" was used to mean "infer."
"Supposably" was invented to mean "supposedly."
"Subsidence" was invented to mean "subsistence."

And no one seemed to care or mind.

Am I just a fussy little scold or is this unacceptable? (I guess I should have put that as an LFAQ--but whatever.)

BAND NAME OF THE DAY:

Sartorial Mullet.

RANDOM SINGLE SENTENCE PORTRAIT OF THE DAY:

He was a miracle of syllabic inefficiency.

PHENOMENON OF THE DAY:

Staring into the empty abyss of the past. The once native land you've been forever cast out of.

NOTE FROM THE JOURNAL OF MOURNING OF THE DAY:

March 8, 2008. I am trying to clear my mind of lingering fantasy hoops roster management questions (was i wrong to drop Foye for Noah?, Gooden for Kendrick Perkins? Should i give up on Ilgauskas returning in time for the fantasy playoffs and pick up Andray Blatche or Anderson Varejao in his stead?) and begin a proper meditation on my father's life on the occasion of what would have been his 80th birthday. I am avoiding and I know it. As I accept the pain that must accompany that path of reflection, the Foyes, Noahs and Goodens of the world scatter to the wind. I turn on the Jonathan Schwartz show on NPR and listen to a full playlist of Sinatra, Mel Torme, George Shearing and Tony Bennet--The vocalists of my father's adolescence and youung adulthood. The voices he simply loved. (and is there any love more simple and true than the love one has for one's songs?) I think about what I would have wanted to do with my father today in celebration of his 80th were he still around to be feted and I immediately know it would involve an outing to hear live music. For his 75th, we took him to hear one of his favorite lounge singers--Mary Cleere Haran--at the Oak Room in the Alginquin. We were given the front, central table-- and I can still see the look of deep pleasure he had surrounded by his family and being serenaded by the enchanting chanteuse...who singled him out for some flirtatious intersong banter. He was a man in his element. He loved music. And he loved to be surrounded by the people he loved. What I wouldn't do to give him an experience like that once again. While the passage of time and the rehearsal of the story of his passing has made the wound of his absence somewhat less raw, it is still almost inconceivable to me that he is not here to call and sing happy birthday to today. That he is not here to be helped into a jazz club to be dined, feted and serenaded once again. His face, his expression of warmth and gratitude and pleasure are all so vivid to me. So heart warmingly, heart breakingly vivid.

As I think about him on the occasion of his 80th (and first to be celebrated in absentia), I reflect on what gifts he has bestowed upon me. One, is certainly a love of music. But I am also appreciative for his having taught me (by example) the value of generosity, humor and warmth. I think he would have been touched and delighted to know that I have been celebrating this day by listening to his favorite radio show and will be celebrating it later by having dinner in his honor and memory with my half sister. I think it would warm his heart to know that even though we are very different people travellling in very different orbits, we have stayed involved in one anothers' lives. And it would warm his heart to know that though I haven't had red meat in ages, I will be honoring his big day by donning the shearling coat that he left me and eating his favorite dinner: Steak with "a little side salad. " And maybe some chocolate cake or a hot fudge sundae for dessert. I will chew my food carefully and slowly and imagine him doing so himself on his two or three remaining teeth. And I will make sure to enjoy every bite of it as if it might be my last. For if there is one thing his shockingly sudden passing has taught me (in a felt in the bones, entirely non-theoretical way), it is that it always truly might be.

I send off a quick e-mail to the scattered members of his remaining family: My brother, my half-sister, my step-mother:

" Just wanted to invite you to join me in singing a virtual electronic round of song on this festive but solemn day: 
 
One-two, a one-two-three-four.... 
 
Happy birthday to you. 
Happy birthday to you. 
Happy birthday dear Dad... (or, for Carla: Dear Al...) 
Happy birthday to you!!!!! 
 
We love and miss you and we wish you were here to celebrate this day with us." 

I sing it out loud and start to cry at the "Dear Dad" part.

The word "Dad". It just struck me that I will never be able to use it again in the mode of address. It is a word or at least a particular usage of a word that has been forever retired from my lexicon. I hang it now in the hall of fame of words as I close my eyes to blow out the birthday candle in my mind.

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