STEPPING OUT WITH MY BABY. . .AND BABY AND BABY AND BABY AND BABY AND BABY

Here they are at the 'Changeling' premiere. That's two more tattoos there on her arm; she tattoos the geographic co-ordinates of where her angels are sprung from her blessed mid-section. No vaginal births for Angie. Brad's not about to throw his hot dog down any wide pink corridors. God bless'em.

RUN FOR YOUR USELESS LIVES

Did somebody just yell 'Terrorist' after McCain asks who the real Barack Obama is? I saw his face sort of fall there for a second. Or not fall but turn wry. He heard it. He knows how distasteful this has all become and what he's become, namely, an old, [sorry but his old-ness seems inescapable at this point; his face seems more and more like paper everyday] shapeless, haphazard Rove/Bush sequel or spin-off. I think so. I see flashes of unease, disappointment when he looks at Palin, just a general undercurrent of self-hatred. I feel it. I know it. If you think you hate yourself during that job interview where your sycophantic, dripping whore-ass is extolling all your fake virtues for a job you don't want and where if there were a butcher knife gleaming in the fluorescent on the conference table between you and the interviewer and her list of questions and a copy of your resume that she hasn't read and your empty folder you keep in front of you to look like there may be some forthcoming documents that would prove said virtues, and where you'd want to grab that knife and plunge it into your chest just to regain some kind of quiet dignity, just imagine how McCain feels right about now. The longest job interview in the world. Quiet dignity. He was said to have it when his father the Admiral pushed to get him out of that POW camp and McCain was said to have refused it because there were others there before him and they deserved to be released first---imagine that! Well, that's all over. It's the end of that kind of dignity. Or any dignity. I just realized that. How startling that is. Shame, humiliation, dignity; it's all over for us.

On Monday, McCain rolled out a new TV ad, "Dangerous," that accuses Obama of being "dishonorable." "Who is Barack Obama?" a narrator ominously asks. "He says our troops in Afghanistan are 'just air-raiding villages and killing civilians.' How dishonorable. Of course what Obama meant was that an over-reliance on air strikes -- due in part to a shortage of ground troops -- is causing a tragic and strategically counterproductive level of civilian casualties."


Just end this already. End the pain.

Thanks to Salon for quote.

EVERYDAY IS ALL HALLOW'S EVE

If I looked like this my father would storm through my apartment with the police, a SWAT team, the RCMP, the Canadian Armed Forces, my mean old red-headed uncle that hates me and force my ass into rehab or at least into a cage where I could be monitored. Doesn't Amy have anyone around her at all? Her father, Mitch, reportedly, was at some event the other day, lounge-singing Frank Sinatra tunes.
Clasp this woman's clavicles and drag her to a hospital. Tie her down. I understand suicide but this is a horror movie.

photo courtesy Wenn

LOVING THE ALIEN HANDLER

What's going on in this photo? Is Tom Cooze using his hand to keep this man against the sidewalk? No, his midget limbs don't have that much muscular strength.

But see that hypodermic in his other hand? He's about to stick the guy to put him into dreamland at least until Tom and his bodyguard, Stone, get away for a little quickie.

"Katie! This guy's an unexploded Thetan! Stone and I are heading over to Scientology HQ for reinforcements! I've already called Kirstie and Travolta! Don't wait up!"

SENSING A PATTERN-- THE END OF THE WORLD?

There was a story on NPR the other day about the brain's propensity to look for patterns, even when there aren't any. If you're feeling out of control in your life, your brain will look for patterns everywhere, even see faces in static. Conspiracy theories seem to sprout up over the most devastating and baffling events in life-- JFK, AIDS, 9/11, Katrina. When the events of the world are so beyond your control, you look for something to explain it all.

With the current economic meltdown, with the DOW dropping another 700 points just moments ago, or the insane proposal that Sarah Palin, another gun's-blaring, don't blink, don't think, don't prepare, god-is-my-co-pilot'er could possibly be half a heartbeat away from control of the nuclear codes, Frank Rich, in his New York Times article piece this weekends, seems to suggest Palin is a modern day Manchurian Candidate, installed in the VP slot with the intention she'll go on to the Presidency because the striking omissions in McCain's medical records are similar to the blank spots in the Watergate tapes. Is McCain just another tantrum away from death? Is his melanoma more likely to return than previously suggested? Will the October surprise not be that McCain drops Palin from the ticket, but that they switch positions, with Palin at the top?

Or is that just my brain looking for a pattern?

DONTCHYAKNOW

BECAUSE THEY SAY IT SO WELL

From Bob Herbert:

In her closing remarks at the vice-presidential debate Thursday night, Ms. Palin referred earnestly, if loosely, to a quote from Ronald Reagan. He had warned that if Americans weren’t vigilant in protecting their freedom, they would find themselves spending their “sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was like in America when men were free.”

What Ms. Palin didn’t say was that the menace to freedom that Reagan was talking about was Medicare. As the historian Robert Dallek has pointed out, Reagan “saw Medicare as the advance wave of socialism, which would ‘invade every area of freedom in this country.’ ”

Does Ms. Palin agree with that Looney Tunes notion? Or was this just another case of the aw-shucks, darn-right, I’m-just-a-hockey-mom governor of Alaska mouthing something completely devoid of meaning?

From Gail Collins:

The people boosting Palin’s triumph were not celebrating because she demonstrated that she is qualified to be president if something ever happened to John McCain. They were cheering her success in covering up her lack of knowledge about the things she would have to deal with if she wound up running the country.

Photo: AP

BALLOONS DON'T BECOME THEM

Angie, Maddox, Pax and Zahara in NYC today. In town for "Changeling" premiere.

Apparently, the free balloons could not entice the tykes in to get haircuts. Or is that just the balloon handler? Wait, I'm confusing them with Suri, who has a 24-hour barley-handler and a traveling hair salon to keep her always-perfect locks. Locks? It's a trap, kids. The haircut, as we know from Katie, is Tom's key to keeping her under lock and-- well, you know.

Free Suri! I won't know she's free until she's got a head full of dreadlocks with a giant skunk-streak down the front.

Love Zahara's velvet pants, though. And the Mary-Janes.

THE END OF JOURNALISM

Congressman

???

If someone purchased stock based on that recommendation, they deserve to lose their money.

LUCKY 13

I was born on the 13th and my life has been a disaster of egotism, jealousy, murder and self-hatred, so I know how O.J. feels. Thirteen years since his last trial, thirteen hours of deliberation. Poor guy. I guess it wasn't in the stars; the planets finally aligned to arraign and convict. However, he can feel good in the knowledge that he's going to jail for armed robbery when he got away with murder. I never get away with anything. Lucky guy.

UM, DEBATE? IN WHAT ASPECT?

"Can I call you Joe?"

Why was her microphone turned on? I've seen dozens of debates where the candidates come out and greet each other onstage, and never heard one greeting so loudly and clearly broadcast. Did she turn her microphone up to 11? Do candidates usually just mouth the word "hello"? Why didn't we hear what Joe said? Maybe he ignored her, which is why she did not call him Joe in the entire debate, and went on to ignore everything he said.

Amazing. She declared she wasn't going to answer any questions asked by moderator Gwen Ifill or Joe if she didn't feel like it. She could not respond to Joe's assertions that McCain, as a proponent of deregulation, helped us get into this economic mess. Instead, "I just got to get back to this tax thing." Same old stupid fear-mongering, that the Democrats are going to raise your taxes, and some stupid "voodoo economics" to explain the untrue assertion Obama will raise taxes on those making $42,000 a year instead of the $250,000. Just ignore the questions, ignore the facts, push through what you want to stress, and the voters will hear that. Usually works, but will it this time?

Palin's strategy-- or tactic? --came back to bite her in the end, though. Whether it was a tactic-- or a strategy-- that Joe brought up the death of his wife and child when he first entered the Senate, he spoke about it in a way that seemed real and relevant. He reversed the claim that Sarah's "real-life" experience is a qualification for the office she seeks. He's been a single father caring for children after the death of his wife and child, thinking the second child might not make it, all while starting his new job as Senator.

That he went on and thrived casts Sarah's experience-- as the mother of a special needs child cared for by her stay-at-home husband and the Governor's mansion staff--into a different light. That Sarah, in her response to Joe's story, could not even bring a single word of sympathy, so determined was she to not listen, to get across the points she wants to make-- gives you an idea of the meaning of a "compassionate Conservative."

TAKE IT OFF!

Here's the cover of Alaska magazine, which presumably even Sarah Palin reads. But when asked by Katie Couric, Sarah couldn't name a single publication she reads to stay abreast of current affairs.

Maybe it's true, like the guys on MSNBC have been trumpeting, that the McCain campaign is all about distraction. So while everyone was gasping and guffawing over Sarah Palin's performance in her interview with Couric, which made it to Saturday Night Live, the real comedy show-- of McCain, within the span of a few days, pronouncing the economy sound, then unsound; of being against regulations, then for them-- was totally ignored. Why wasn't it fodder for late night?

McCain's latest embarrassment, suspending his campaign to pass an emergency economic bill-- but not getting it passed, and resuming his non-suspended campaign-- has not gone unnoticed by the pundits. Uh-oh, time for distraction. What will they have Sarah do next? I'm thinking she'll arrive onstage for Thursday night's debate sliding down a stripper pole. Oh that Sarah, she's just like the rest of us!