Monday, December 22, 2008

It's a Wonderful Life?

I never liked the movie "It's a Wonderful Life." I don't admit that much because it is such an unquestioned part of the Christmas movie canon. It is the favorite Christmas movie of many of my closest friends and family members. But to me it's extremely depressing.

This guys gives up all his hopes and dreams to help a community that is narrow minded and self-centered. Yeah they come through at the end with a measly $5000 bucks but George still has to live in that crappy old house running a business that causes no end of stress. He never gets to go to the oilfields of Venezuela or the savannahs of Africa. His nomadic wunderlust is crushed into a forced domesticity that perpetuates Thoreau's quite desperation. And those jazz clubs of Pottersville seem a lot more happening than the judgemental and co-dependent denizens of Bedford Falls.

I read an article in the New York Times that captures my opinion of this movie perfectly. I finally realize I'm not alone in my apocalyptic vision of It's A Wonderful Life. Read it Here...

Friday, December 19, 2008

Wanted: Real Dialogue

I applaud President-Elect Obama for selecting Rick Warren to give the invocation at the inauguration. The gay/lesbian mafia have reared their ugly heads again by demonstrating their hypocritical intolerance of anyone who disagrees with their world view. I guess they assumed that now the political and social pendulum would swing completely their way now that Bush was leaving office. Obama has shown that he really meant what he said by reaching out to all Americans.

Obama understands that the devisive zero-sum game played by both the right wing ayatollahs and the left wing loons these past couple of decades stalls progress and keeps the United States in the muddy trenches of quagmire.

What is needed is intelligent dialogue and conversation. Neither side will budge the other with yelling, screaming and acrimony as the main ground rules for engagement. Obama seems to represent a member of the left willing to talk to the right. Warren seems to represent a member of the right willing to talk to the left.

This controversy was accelerated by a bored media desperately in search of a firestorm in the Obama transition. A supposed Obama connection to Gov. Blago didn't pan out. This story will also fizzle out very soon.


Note: All puns in this blog were completely intentional.

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Bradford wins the Heisman!


Superman wears Sam Bradford pajamas.

Boomer!

Sooner!

Tebow is a Neanderthal. Sorry...shouldn't insult Neaderthals. Seriously! Crying because he didn't win it again! Using that for motivation in the championship game? What a loser. He shouldn't have been on that stage. He was only up there because of winning the thing last year...which he deserved. This year his numbers were considerably down and he lost at home to Ole Miss. You don't get a Heisman just because you gave a good pep talk. Graham Harrell deserved it more than Tebow.

Colt McCoy...yeah if you give an award for flopping on the sideline like an Argentinian soccer player. He did that twice against OU to get personal fouls called...which led to first downs...which led to undeserved scores. And this argument that he wasn't surrounded with the same kind of talent as Bradford. Asinine! ut always ranks among the top in the nation in recruiting. They have the best athletes in the world. It's not Bradford's fault sMack Brown can't coach 'em to their potential.

It should have been Bradford, Harrell and Crabtree on the podium with Bradford winning it...which he did. Now on to an 8th National Title!

Friday, December 12, 2008

The Thunderer

In 1997 my buddy Scot and I planned to Eurorail across Spain, hook up with a Yugoslavian freighter at Gibraltar and cruise to Casablanca to celebrate our birthdays (which fell around the same time) at Rick's Cafe Americain.

But I ran low on Pesetas so we went to a bullfight instead with a crazy retired Matador nicknamed "The Thunderer" which sounds better in Spanish.

After the corrida Scot went back to Jerusalem and two months later I went to Oklahoma.

2008 Update: Yugoslavia is now Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia-Herzogovina, Croatia and Slovenia. Pesetas have been replaced by Euros. And bullfighting is now banned in Barcelona.

Tuesday, December 09, 2008

Death to the Pixies

So I was in this ski shop halfway between Durango and Purgatory Mountain. This was back when "Bubba's Boards" was a bona fide indie shop ran by stoners and shredders before it went corporate and relocated into swanky digs in the Purgatory Village. I saw this rock band sticker on the wall behind the counter that said "Death to the Pixies."

I had been recently introduced to The Pixies and liked their stuff. So I asked the boarder behind the counter who looked like Jeff Buckley what he had against The Pixies.

He said, "Dude! We love the Pix. This is a promo for their album."

So I had showed my ignorance of Pixie discography but those Bubba guys didn't judge my alt cred. They were too busy prank calling "Gold Medal Sports" a rival shop owned by a crusty old bugger with a big white beard named Tom who had jerked us around regarding boot rental prices a day earlier.

A few years later I saw that stoner employee at a local dive called Schoolhouse Pizza north of Durango. I asked him "you use to work at Bubba's?" He said, "Yeah awhile back."

His glazed over barmate laughed out loudly and shouted "This punk got FIRED! They fired his &@*!"

I said, "Oh yeah, What for?"

"Smoking weed behind the building during business hours."

Buckley just smiled sheepishly. I wasn't surprised by the firing or the cause.

Later that night I saw a rich woman back into a Mercedes SUV in the Schoolhouse Pizza parking lot which was iced over. She busted out the SUV's tailight. She was wearing all white with white fur and had super bleached white hair. She was in her 60's and was trying very hard to keep her youth but not very successfully. She just drove off without reporting her crash. The nerve.

Today I printed off a "Death to the Pixies" decal to tape on the wall outside my classroom to commemorate this memory.