Ode to Joy by Beeker

Merry Xmas, Happy Hannukah, Kwanza, and Ramadan.

Encore with Habanera

Jizz in my pants...

Note Timberlake making a cameo in the supermarket.

Ashes and Snow- Feather to Fire

Kind of tugs at the heart.

Feeling Unmotivated?

Serge Gainsbourg- Coolest french dude ever.

Je T'aime

B.B. (Brigitte Bardot)

Quite a legacy...

Dear God,

Sorry, I've been too busy to post. Coming back soon.

"Presto"

Remember waking up early on saturday morning to catch all the new cartoons? well, this one captures that old feeling again. Bravo.

Pro Prop 8?

SHAME ON YOU!!!

Monster Versus Aliens

My latest project. We get to destroy San Francisco. It's awesome.

YES WE DID

I knew it would happen.

Cat Song

Good morning...

the latest in Photo-bombery

I just barely made the crop on this one. PERRRFECT.

The Republican Base

this pretty much sums it up...

I really can't wait to hand these people their asses on November 4th. god bless america.

Shots rang out

I have ranted about guns before on this blog. I have had plenty of experiences and close calls with guns and I am very familiar with the violent pop that a hand gun makes when fired. But something I hadn't actually seen up close and personal was somebody dying from being shot.

I might have seen somebody receive fatal wounds in a gun battle in NYC, only i didn't stick around to find out. I've had bullets whizz by close enough to me to know that a few feet might have made the difference of a lifetime. But this experience had a very different effect on me. I am an adult now. Being near gunshots and death is something that doesn't "pump my nads" or make for an exciting night. It is what it is, a horrible tragedy.

It was a crazy day for me. I had woken up at home in NYC late for my flight to LAX. I grabbed my crazy cat Miso, stuffed him unceremoniously into the soft airplane-friendly carry case i had bought the night before. kissed my girl goodbye and basically all but tackled a taxi in the rain. I did the classic maneuver you always see in the movies and promised the taxi driver a 50 dollar tip if he could get me to the airport in time for my flight. it actually worked, unless he was normally a psychotic driver. the guy cut through the lanes like his life depended on it and we hydro-planed all the way to Newark in plenty of time for me to make my flight.

I wish i had a funny story about taking crazy Miso out of the carrier and walking through security with him in my arms surrounded by thousands of strangers. but he was so scared that he just clung to me and didn't move at all. The only funny part of that was that i warned everybody around me that i had a crazy cat and people literally backed up giving me like 15 feet in all directions in an area that was pretty much crammed with people.

The flight was over very quickly since i passed out. I woke up with the cali sun in my face and was psyched to be back and not in the cold wet dark soup i had just left behind. I got home, dropped off Miso, and immediately went out to party with Bask1, my NYC bud who was my new/old neighbor in Venice. It was the Abbot Kinney Festival. A once a year event when one of the main shopping streets in Venice becomes a street fair. Great food, crafts, cruiser bikes, venice characters, bands, beer gardens, and general mayhem.

Despite my fierce limp and my jet lag and hang over, i was filled with a great positive excitement about being there. It was my new home, and it was sunny, tasty, edgy, hip, and very SoCal. I buried my face in a lamb gyro and bumped into locals i had already met in my brief time there, including the neighbors who live next door to me. All was good, all was laid back.

As night rolled in, I decided to get a beer or two at the OtherRoom and just chill out. I knew a few people who go there and It's three blocks from my house. Plus my cat Miso was still freaked out in the new place and my big human ass crashing around would only cause him to hide under the bed, rather then snoop around like a ninja.

I said whatsup to the bouncers. they were nice guys, but unlike the other spots in the area that employed older, more professional type bouncers, the OtherRoom has younger, kind of "local" looking guys. At the risk of sounding racist, they were latino and kind of thuggish looking. And they always had friends in the area who stopped by and hung out with them on the sidewalk, or parked in the spot right in front. I knew they were kind of "gang" guys, but it never occurred to me that the affiliation would ever get near the wine bar. Although, in retrospect, i did think it was kind of an odd choice by the owners, considering what places like the Brig do, right down the street.

So i was half way into my Hefen Weizen and standing in the doorway with my back facing outside. I was right in the middle of thinking about what a good day it was. i was so happy to wake up, with my cat in my new place, my new cruiser beach bike (Schwinn Cruiser SSX), and my new/old awesome job. When all of a sudden, there was a short sequence of extremely loud pops. The clap of the noise shook my eardrums and i could feel the sound waves in my skull. I knew INSTANTLY that it wasn't anything but a gun going off right behind me. I ducked down and wedged myself behind the big metal door. Of course, the OC crowd that has become the norm at the OtherRoom were all standing looking around like it was just fireworks or a joke of some kind. I was the only person, at least in the doorway or inside that ducked down.

Then came the screaming, and then yelling, and then I heard "he's shot!" and "the guy ran that way!". that's when i stood up. I figured that they must have been talking about the shooter and that he was probably done doing what he came to do. You could hear the word spread back into the bar in waves, and people started rushing to the back and out the front to get away. At that point I stepped out the doorway and saw the victim. I had nodded to him on the way in. He seemed like a confident and proud kind of person. He was maybe a bit younger then me, wearing long shorts, an over sized t-shirt and high tops. But now he was no longer proud and confident. He was laying in the gutter with one leg up on the side walk and the other leg oddly flat and kind of twisted along the curb. He was already white as a sheet and his chest was already drenched in blood. but he was alive. his friends were all around him trying to raise his legs and get him flat on the street.

I can't really convey how disturbing it was to watch this man slowly expire. His friends were clueless as to what to do and they were somewhat drunk themselves and within a minute, two of them got into a fight, right over there dying friend. there was a lot of yelling and screaming and several girls just standing there crying. And this poor guy, clearly unable to talk, but very aware of his situation. he was looking all around, and up at the sky and then at his friends and then back up at the sky again. Maybe he knew he was seeing things for the last time, maybe he was in shock and just trying to figure out what was happening. I will never know what was going on in his head. Just what was happening in mine.

First off, it was my street we were on. I just moved there. I spent the last year whining about how gentrified NYC has gotten and longing for the good old days of chaos and crime. And now here I was, getting my wish. A man was just shot execution style about 12-15 feet from where I was just standing, and three blocks from where I live, on the ground floor, with a glass front door. Not only that, I was getting to watch the inept response of the local EMS and Police first hand. A man was clearly dying, surrounded by people who couldn't help him, other then to press some bar towels on his blown out chest.

Since it was just an hour or two after the huge festival, of course there were about 10 squad cars and 30 cops within a minute on the scene. But they just walked around with their hands on their guns and the other hand waving flashlights at people and at the victim and his friends. Not a single one of them got near the victim or offered any advice to his friends about what to do. They were talking on their shoulder walkie talkies and i am sure that several people had called the ambulance and so had these cops.
But time just kept passing. The was moving less and the pool of blood under him was getting bigger and bigger. The cops were still walking around and one or two of them were stretching out the crime scene tape and others were asking people questions in the crowd. To me it seemed like everything was backwards. The ambulance should be the first thing, then the questions can be asked. Had they moved faster to save the victim, they might have had the best eye witness. but his life didn't seem to be paramount. which made me also shudder to think what would happen had it been me in the line of fire and not this guy. Mind you, this was a block from Julia Roberts and Angelika Houston's homes. So we aren't talking about straight ghetto. We are talking about where ghetto and gentrification are fighting over a neighborhood that obvioulsy was recently ruled by ghetto. So, there are gangsters on my block, as well as multi million dollar lofts. Ambulances shouldn't be so slow to respond here.
More time passes. I looked again at him, and knew he was not there anymore. One of his friends had his hand over they guy's mouth trying to feel for a breath. I saw him pull his hand away and shake his head. That was it. The guy's life was over. His last moments spent in the gutter at Abbot Kinney Boulevard, surrounded by wine bar patrons and his close friends. The shooter had apparently ran in the direction of MY place, so when a cop asked me what i saw and i told him that i hadn't seen the shooter he said i should go home. i looked at him and said i live in the direction that the shooter ran in and i am fine waiting here a bit longer to give them the chance to follow up on that. he nodded, the logic was pretty much self explanatory.

I waited a few more minutes, until i couldn't stand watching this shocking failure of basic humanity, coupled with the failure of basic medical services that so quickly and ruthlessly shoved the book end into this victim's existence. i didn't care if he was in a gang, i didn't care if it was revenge for something else, all i cared about was the failure at all levels to live and let live, and to save a life that is so sacred to all of us as individuals, yet so worthless as a whole.

I got on my cruiser and started riding in the direction of a killer. To add yet another level of dread to the night, the ghetto bird (police helicopter) that was hovering over the area locked it's spotlight on me and followed me for a whole block. it was like straight out of Menace to Society. I live in the REALNESS.

That night i locked all my windows and doors. The sound of the helicopters hovering went on until the morning.

here's a local report about it and some posts from witnesses.
and another, with a police briefing included

The victim was a father of two.

On being intolerant of intolerance

Work Forum snippet...on Liberals vs. Conservatives...

Animator2 wrote:
why are they so angry?!
Animator3 wrote:
Never has there been a more appropriate situation for facepalm.
Zen2 wrote:
WOW. Obama said it was easy to rile up a crowd by stoking hatred, but thats not what america needs now.

That was by no means an "attack" on those people. i consider that a very mild reference to bad leadership...he wasn't even blaming the gracious lovely folk calling him a terrorist and calling for his death.

anything i read or see about the GOP lately makes me feel like Bill Murray after getting slimed as a Ghost Buster.

Animator4 wrote:
I dunno, if I was going make a Ghostbuster's reference, I'd probably go with the pink slime from Ghostbusters 2 that concentrated anger, hate, and all the other unsavory emotions. Those McCain supporters probably use it like Bryl cream or Ben-gay for achy joints.

Animator5 wrote:

I love it when an aging crowd yells "Get a job!" ... because somebody has to pay for their Social Security.

Animator4 wrote:
Because they want to live in an America where being white and Christian meant you were better than other people, and Obama is a symbol of how much that world has disappeared. They have been told covertly and overtly for decades that the reason for those changes are things like affirmative action, feminists, uppity blacks, and liberals. They now fear that the enemy within will take over the country.

Zen2 wrote:
God, I sure hope so. GOBAMA!

Animator5 wrote:
We really do live in two Americas. Sad.

Zen2 wrote:
i'm still annoyed that we won the civil war.

Animator6 wrote:
Well lookey here. The party of tolerance and gummybear icecream.


Zen2 wrote:
that made me so proud. Upper West Side, born and raised.

i've never heard Liberals claim to be tolerant of conservatives, just minorities, and alternative groups. those liberals also weren't yelling for anybody's death, just booing and flipping off is pretty minor for that area. it was like, hey, you wanna walk through my neighborhood (one that's like 90% very liberal) and tell me what yo think? well here's what i think.

they didn't have one sound bite of an argument?! the movie made in pennsylvania was all about the sound bites of what the people were actually saying. which is what was really scary, not boo boo, or get a job. nice try though.

Animator6 wrote:
Be proud if you want. I think its pretty douchbaggy for anybody (both sides) to be like that.

Zen2 wrote:
that's a legit stance.

but if you flip it around. maybe it's actually coming together by behaving similarly. maybe there are some Pennsyltucky folk who will see that and say "hey lookit, they just like us!"

if liberals were all hare krishna and zen-like they would be even weirder to the McCain folkses.

and honestly, I can't be tolerant of the GOP. not anymore. tolerance for that party went out the window for me, the second we attacked iraq. it's time to really fight about it. a LOT of people have died in the last 8 years of unnatural causes.

Animator6 wrote:

My question is why can't we all just get along instead of playing this whole my side is right and yours never will be. In all honesty there is no right it is all a matter of perspective. Politics is like a winding road with thousands of divergent routes with no end in sight. Just take this in mind when you try to argue that you are right to people that disagree with you. All you end up doing is make either you or them angry and waste both of your lives in a petty argument.

Animator7 wrote:

you guys should watch this

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind.html

it is directly related to this very discussion

Zen2 wrote:

hey Animator6, I generally don't argue with republicans. I can't even understand them.

Actually, I understand the really rich ones that voted for Bush for tax breaks and the removal of the estate tax. I understand them. no need to argue there, and there's no chance of changing their mind$.

As for the rest of them. anybody who believes in one or any number of these ideas: that gay people don't deserve the right to marry, that a fertilized egg is a human being with more rights then the woman who has it in her uterus, that Osama and Hussein were buds and we did the right thing by invading a large unstable nation, that you should be able to have a beer with the leader of the free world rather then get schooled by them, that immigration is a huge problem worth building a wall around texas, that it's okay to not vote for a war veteran because he windsurfs, but then four years later vote for one who can't remember how many houses he owns, that you can trust corporations to allow money to trickle down to the lower classes is somebody who i will NEVER COMPREHEND. let alone want them to walk down Columbus Avenue as a small herd. that's MY neighborhood. I promise to never set foot in rural texas with an Obama sign in my hands...that's just stupid and actually dangerous.

Animator8 wrote:
Booing someone's belief system (whether correct in your mind or not) exudes intolerance. It is less dramatic than "kill him" but it is still intolerance none the less.

Zen2 wrote:
Is it intolerance, if it's being intolerant OF intolerance? methinks not.

well, things are getting better. Had they pulled that s**t in the
70's, 80's, or even early 90's on the upper west side they would have gotten shot by one of those handguns they are trying to protect.

Changing Animator1's mind...

At work there are discussion forums that amount to debates on any and all subjects between almost 2000 animators working in 3 seperate studios. I view it as a great source of information, differing views, therapy, and rant space. here's a snippet from yesterday...

Zen2 wrote:

extremism is definitely a problem for both sides of an argument. clearly some kind of middle ground needs to be met in a democratic society. or at least a clear majority on one of the two sides. but that will almost always leave out extremists on both sides no matter what the outcome is.

as for who gets into the media and who is extreme? maybe I am. I believe that people who think gay marriage shouldn't be allowed is fanatic extremism. it's fundamentally religion based and its an infringement on equality. especially in a country founded on equal rights, and the separation of church and state. it's like we are collectively throwing away our own principles.

Almost 50% of this country thinks that gay marriage should be illegal. that's EXTREME.

Animator1 wrote:

well, I'm glad someone brought this up. I was getting tired of all the one-sided name calling.

At the risk of starting a flame war maybe I can explain that side of the arguement. Proposition 8 is to define 'marriage' between a man and a woman. It is not an anti-gay issue, but they are involved because they choose to be so. It is defending a word that is sacred to us and is being twisted into something it is not. Let me put it this way, what if 'gay' meant relations with animals or relatives? Pretty absurd and even offensive, right? For someone who is married, the word "marriage" is sacred. Those that really love their family would find the word "family" sacred. I'm sure that you can think of some other words that have strong meaning to you. Marriage defined as between man and woman has been since the dawn of time, through out all cultures in all lands. Marriage was created by married people (if that doesn't sound too weird) and it disconcerning to have someone else try to redefine it to serve them.
Believe me, there would be a lot less hub-bub if they had respected the meaning of the word "marriage" (tolerance for others beliefs) and chosen a unique word or gone with the traditional "domestic partnership" phrase. /California/ Family /Protection Act/ of 2001 entitling them to the same state law benefits as married couples. If they want more rights they can continue to go thru the legal process to recieve them. I respect the feelings of all on this issue.

But that's not all. As a political issue, this will change many other things that will and have infrige on other peoples rights. First of all, this gov't decision to allow gay marriage was against the will of the people. The state successfully voted on this issue on Prop 22 year 2000 . It was the popular choice and the will of the people of California. That decicion was overturned by four activist judges in San Fransisco. This simply restores the meaning of marriage thru the will of the people.
This has and will continue to destroy the freedom of religion and other rights too. In fact, this forces conflict with religion. This has already happened. A Swedish priest chose not to marry a gay couple in his church in Mass. as it was against the religions tenants. He was jailed for this. A doctor declined a lesbian couple for invetrofertilization and invited them to go elsewhere. Instead of going elsewhere the lesbian couple took it to court and forced him against his values to do it anyways. A Catholic adoption agency was forced to close down by the state because they have a religious mandate to adopt to heterosexual couples. Boy Scouts of America fought a tough legal battle years ago to keep it's scout leaders heterosexual (for obvious reasons) and won. It will be overturned. I could cite many other examples from the past but you get the picture.

There is no hatred, bigotry, or ignorance here. Just a desire to preserve what we have always felt was sacred. One does not need to be a religious right-wing nut-job to feel this way. Whether you agree with it or not, please be tolerant of it.

My Hero wrote:

You seem like a reasonable guy and let's hope we can all keep this from being a flame war. It is worth talking about.

This, which I think is the basis of your argument, is simply not true. There have been plenty of cultures where men could be married to several women, and there are large parts of the world today where that is legal. (Islam still generally allows as many as four wives.) Marriage between people of the same sex also has history, and wasn't declared illegal in the Roman Empire until the Christian era. It is currently legal is six countries. (In any case, I'm not sure that historical arguments have all that much weight. Slavery also was permitted in most societies for most of history, and until the last couple of hundred years Jews were not legally citizens in many countries.)

Personally, I think the sensible way to cut this Gordian knot is to remove marriage from civil codes. People should be able to form civil partnerships, which would have all of the legal rights and responsibilities currently assigned to marriage. "Marriage" should not be a legal concept, but a social and religious one. So, if a Christian church wants to only allow marriage between one man and one woman, that is their right, while if another wants to allow it between two men or two women, that is also their right. But the legal parts would be civil partnership.

However, the word "marriage" is too deeply embedded in our society and the ideology of this issue for that separation to happen, at least any time soon. Given that, the problem with outlawing same sex marriage is that marriage is the key legal part of how families are formed. We are born into families (in general).In general, we grow up, move away from our parents, pair up, and form new families (with children or not). Thus humanity precedes, generation by generation. The laws that take force when two people marry are the laws that our society uses to support this generational formation of families. These run from tax codes that allow couples to treat two incomes as one, inheritance rules, rules dealing with the dissolution of such a relationship, and so on. When you marry someone, you switch your next of kin from being your parent to being your partner.

So, yeah, it would be nice if the loaded word "marriage" could be removed from this and all laws shifted to some kind of domestic partnership. A movement among the same-sex marriage opponents to do that would, in my mind, be understandable and moral. The current effort, though, comes down to being an attempt to keep same-sex couples from forming families, or at least to put them in an underclass category where their families don't have the same legal protections and responsibilities that heterosexual families have. This to me is immoral, as well as being unfair.

Zen2 wrote:

ok Animator1. i will tolerate what amounts to your lack of tolerance. we do live in a free country after all. but really, using the word "sacred" in legal discussion is a breach of the whole point of this country as defined by our founders. and the fact that what other people do in their homes has anything to do with what you do in yours is just NOT A FACT.

by all means, hold marriage sacred. love thy wife and all that. but don't go out and vote against somebody else's ability to feel economically safe, and "sacred", equal, and in love, the same way you do. that borders on fascist, and like i said before, fanatical extremism with clear roots in religion.

i can see the future here, since it does repeat itself. gay marriage will be legal everywhere in a bunch of years. and there will be documentaries about the long road to equal rights for gays. it will show speeches made by people opposed to it and people will say, as they do when watching racist speeches of the 60's, "look at those shameful ignorant people! they're so scared."

this is the time to do the right thing, while you still have the chance. history is not going to view you well if you don't.

Animator1 wrote:

Gotta admit that's a pretty good arguement. Let me know when you run for office.
But until that day the problem lies with the separaton of church and state. I believe I mentioned the problem of the priest thrown in prison because he wouldn't marry lesbians against the tennants of his faith. Or the doctor being forced to perform procedures against his moral will...
The very definition itself changes the laws regarding this. That's another reason why I fight for civil unions and marriage to be 2 separate things.

Serously, people, I mentioned this was not an anti-gay thing for me (although it's obvious they are involved). It protects traditional marriage. I've told you prop 8 views, I've told you the Scouts views, I've given definitions and clarity, I've stated the will of the people as it was voted on. I've stated how i would support civil unions as well as marriage. Never have I implied God smiting anyone (quite the opposite re my earlier comment on Katrina) or that gays should be locked up. I have gay friends, and while we don't always agree on the issues that doesn't make me hate them as people. Please don't imply otherwise.

Zen2 wrote:

it's very much an anti-gay thing. narrowing the definition of marriage to being between a man and a woman is DIRECTLY aimed at blocking gay marriage. and as for your gay friends, i don't see the difference between you actively denying them the right to marriage, and you not approving in a very direct sense, of their lifestyle.

if you are implying that prop 8 is defending marriage against wider definitions and couplings like the aforementioned bestiality, and pedofilia, then you're offering up a red herring. pedophilia is a crime because it victimizes children. bestiality is...well, super far out of the realm of possible threats to marriage and anybody who thinks that gay marriage might lead to animal marriage really needs to take a step back and splash some cold water on their faces.

mentioning all these other threats to marriage is a talking point of the christian right, and it really is disgusting to think that one will lead to the others. and highly insulting to my intelligence and sense of common decency.

i am surprised that a priest would get thrown in jail for not performing a marriage in his church. i would need to see the article on that one. seems like if a church doesn't believe in issuing a church document or right then it can choose not to do so. a doctor is different.

they are licensed by the state, and they can't make moral judgements about their patients bodies. if a dr doesn't believe in abortions then he shouldn't be a ob-gyn. the same thing goes for pharmacists. lest we let religion and morality dictate to people what kind of care they get. imagine that if all the drs and pharmacists in alabama decide whats moral, then they effectively overpower the state. that can't be allowed.

Animator1 wrote:

Of course not. I didn't mean 'sacred' as a 'religious-only' way as i know a few atheists/agnostic who have strong feelings of the institution of marriage and have used the same language.
I don't believe I've mentioned faith in this discussion other than using particular examples. ex separation of church and state, God didn't smite NO. And, yes, I cited a lot as many religions are involved with (but not exclusive to) one side of the arguement as gays are to the other (but not exclusive to.)
The terms of definition where implied towards unions of genders, not race, religion or otherwise.
And whoever thru out the "red herring" bit implying I was saying bestiality and homosexuality were the same thing.... NOT appreciated. That's what I meant by "implying otherwise"

Zen2 wrote:

my last post must have come out wrong. i didn't mean that you were implying that they are the same (homosexuality and bestiality), or that one leads to another in the same individuals.

i've just heard the argument before that we are "protecting" marriage from the other possible couplings by limiting it to one man and one woman, that is what you said in the beginning and you did list the other offending types of couplage'. its a good way to argue AROUND the issue of gay marriage. "it's not that i have anything against gay marriage, i just want to protect marriage from all the other crazy stuff" Rick Santorum of Penn loved that argument.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Santorum

so if you let same sex marriage in the door, then the definition gets loosened and the perverts of the world get to march in as well. not that you were saying homosexuals might do the other things themselves. but that the point of prop 8 is to make sure those real pervs don't get into the club. which seems logical, until we step back and look at what is actually happening. gay marriage is getting shot down. the rest are still violent victimizing crimes regardless of the definition of marriage.

So the rights and protections are NOT the same.

somebody pointed out that Domestic Partnerships don't have the same rights as marriage. i think it was in situations where they couldn't care for themselves and the partner couldn't make any decisions about medical care.

thats a very scary right to have to live without. do you see how unfair that is?

Animator1 wrote:

Seriously, I understand your concern about it. And I understand your need to fight for that. Throw it out on the next proposition and see what happens. You don't need to answer this publically but would the distiction between marriage and civil union be more palatable if this was added? I don't know to what degree but I do know some people are more sympathetic to this way of thinking.

Zen2 wrote:

being that I am hell bent on wanting equal rights for all people who want to live and love one person for the rest of their lives. i would say that having the two definitions have the same exact rights is necessary. why they would need different names is less important...and actually seems somewhat moot.

I personally don't need to DNR someone, and actually I am a heterosexual, so my fight is more along the lines of making this country live up to it's name. the whole argument makes us look pretty bad, and kind of backwards. I mean really, Canada?! whats that all a-boot?

My Hero wrote:

Were I able to wave my hand and change things, I'd make what the state does civil unions, which would involve all the legal rights and responsibilities, and make marriage purely a matter of religion and convention. That wouldn't satisfy the Prop 8 people, though--they want to reserve the word "marriage" for a man and a woman, and they want the state in enforce that. But, unless we're going to make this a theocracy, I think that aim is rather offensive.

Marriage has an ancient history, as mentioned, as the basis of family. When I went from living with a woman to marrying her, the difference was in the community and the broader family. We were part of the family tree, part of the family structure. Marriage gives you a certain position as a member of the community. (I''m not saying that unmarried people don't or shouldn't have status as part of society, too, but marriage is traditionally at the center of that structure.)

I cannot think of a single legitimate reason why gay people should not have full access to that position as pillars of society. The idea that the way your sexual desires are directed should determine whether you can form a family in as full a sense as anyone else is frankly nonsense. The fact that some churches think that right should be limited to people who like to have sex in a particular way is irrelevant. They have that right within their own churches. Beyond that, it is nothing less than bigotry.

I know that I'm drawing a harsher line about this than I did in my earlier message, and there's a reason for that--my patience about this has run out and I'm feeling upset. Some of you may have heard about the now-infamous case of the first grade class who went to throw rose petals on the City Hall steps to celebrate their teacher's wedding. That class was from my daughter's school, and the little girl quoted in the article is the sister of one of my daughter's best friends. Her parents are also friends of ours, people we know from the school and from our synagogue. As mentioned in the article, that girl's parents, two women, are planning to get married within the next two weeks, before that right may be taken away from them. This case has become a causes belle for the Yes on 8 crowd, and is all over the right-wing blogosphere, stated as the realization of their worst fears, though really also as the fulfillment of their expectations. I talked a few minutes ago to one of the girl's mothers, who is rather distraught, about how our children would navigate the media storm that apparently has descended on our school, and how people who oppose Prop 8 are angry that the school allowed this to happen, because it gives ammunition to the Yes on 8 crowd.

When I read the article about this wedding and the class's attendance on the front page of the Chronicle a couple of days ago, it never occurred to me it would be a problem. I felt a flush of happiness at feeling close to such a sweet thing, and when the article mentioned that some controversy was already appearing I felt a flush of pride at the comment from our principal (also a member of our synagogue, fwiw), who defended the children's attendance. The idea that somehow every moment children spend in first grade is so filled with academics that they cannot afford to share in the joy of their teacher's wedding at City Hall (only a few blocks from school) is absurd. The idea that the Yes on 8 crowd is using this as a poster issue is disgusting.

Peter, whether or not we would wish it otherwise, marriage is the name of the game. Even if there was such a thing as a civil union that was exactly legally equivalent (and there is no such thing right now), to deny the term "marriage" based on anything other than the joining of two people into a family is simply wrong. I wish you would reconsider your position. In traditional European societies marriage was a business relationship between two families, having more to do with the passing down of property than with love. Now, marriage is the way society recognizes a love relationship that is meant to last for a lifetime and join two people together. Can we in good conscience, with true morality, and yes, even with the love that God has granted us, can we seriously say that marriage should be limited to those who have the right set of organs between their legs? What business is that of ours, and how can any of us be so arrogant as to say that two adults who love each other should not be able to share the state of marriage, the state which our long tradition has placed at the center of family and society?

In a world where Britney Spears can can married in a drunken stupor in Las Vegas and divorced days later, where 50% of marriages end in divorce, where the pregnant 17 year old daughter of the Republican VP candidate is going to be forced into marriage with her unwilling boyfriend and the Republican Presidential candidate is married to the woman he picked up in a bar while married to his first wife, the idea that marriage is some sort of special and sacred institution that cannot be extended to gay people is simply unsupportable.

Santa Ana winds

I am waiting on renders at work so i can sneak in some posts.

I have now switched to Beach Cruiser mode instead of skating around the hood due to my thankless ankle. But a new danger has revealed itself. The winds are up to 60 miles an hour. which in places like NYC, have always meant watch out for flying debris from off the sidewalk. Here its the debris from above that is dangerous. Palm trees shed some really large palm stalks and often they come tumbling from like 100 feet above...in the dark. they land in the middle of the street and on cars, and on people. right now, the streets are covered with the palms, which are sharp and stick up in weird angles. it looks pretty much like a small tornado came through.

Another bit of excitement created by these winds is, of course, wild fires. I was driving up and over the mountains heading north on the 405, when suddenly the left lane is a line of Highway Patrol cars racing north with their lights and sirens at full blast. As I peeked the hill and saw into the valley, I was met with an image that immediately reminded me of the huge smoke pillar downtown on September 11th. I have seen forest fires before, once in a valley i was staying in in Napa, and at other times, on road trips mostly out west. but this one was clearly in a city. or at least the edge of the city. there are houses set right into the middle of the fire, and you can see all the lights of the fire engines and police clustered in the area.

And thousands of us, maybe millions, all driving to work, thanking fate that it ain't our neighborhood we are looking at. It's like being right next to a disaster, but not in it.

Westsiiiide...whoa.

The ocean wind on my face, Orion's belt peeking through between palm trees gently swaying in the breeze as they pass by above me and my swiftly moving skateboard. the streets, only barely familiar to me, revealing themselves to be somewhat inconsistent in the quality of the concrete, yet consistently quiet and dark.

The excitement of knowing I have brought myself to this place, that this is what I wanted, and I now find myself finally doing what i had pictured in my mind. Skating Venice at night. just blocks from the ocean, where large and perfectly formed waves crash in the dark. In a few hours, the sun would rise in the east and light up the water, for my first free Saturday of surfing. All is good. I am drunk and doing a pretty good job at flowing along despite unseen cracks and holes everywhere. I am a good skater...dude. I can still olly, and every now and then i land a kick flip. I rule.

Suddenly, the street disagrees with me. It's like "brah, your 35 years old...suck it". my board stops as it hits a deep pothole and the wheels get caught. my relaxed stance of uber-confidence is suddenly horizontal and my right ankle rolls over the tip of the board as i splay out my arms and slide into a concrete home plate located somewhere under a parked pick-up truck. pain seers through my leg as my usually pretty athletic ability to fall, politely and quietly, declines to come to my aid in this moment of need and catharsis.

Defeated, I get up off the ground, look around at the uncaring trees around me and the empty, yet mocking street under me. I pull my abandoned board out from under the truck and try to skate away from the whole embarrassing scene of come-upence. But the ankle has another idea. It decides it's going to stop functioning for a month or so. It's like "dude, we're done". Take a seat, son.

The next day, I woke up to a big mortadella salami instead of a foot and hopped to a taxi to get to the hospital in Santa Monica. on a side note, best emergency room ever. there's a large flat screen TV there to watch, but i didn't get to watch it because before i could even get my paperwork done, I was "fast-tracked" into the doctors office, handed a bottle of Vicodan and given x-rays. an hour later i was back at home with the knowledge that there was nothing torn or broken. just my icarus-like hubris.

It's raining meat...

There's Mortimer!!

You gotta love cats

This guy Simon Tofield, really gets it.

COMEDY GOLD

Triumph the insult Dog meets David Blaine

Shifting Gears to Bi-Coastal

Is bi-coastal even a word?

Sooo, I guess NYC just can't have me all year long anymore. I'm sorry, but with global warming muscling out snow days, yet falling pathetically short of overpowering the cold fronts and their tendancy to piss cold rain. Nowadays, I am WAY less prone to wrap up in a jacket and bear my way through it, especially after living in a permanent state of Springtime in San Francisco for almost 6 years...and perpetual summer in LA for 2 years.

Add that to the "improved" or "gentrified" change in the culture of the city itself, with it's obvious loss of that "Where the Wild Things Are" state of mind, and the torturous taming of the beast by Connecticut and every suburb within an airplane or car ride, I no longer find myself amazed by it. The excitement that once overwhelmed me whenever i was out and about in NYC has faded. Now, I am all too aware of all the great places out there in the wide world beyond the five boroughs. NYC works it's magic on me only when juxtaposed against these other places. I need to miss it and what's left of it's originality. I need to miss the museums, the parks, the pizza. Of course I DON'T need to miss my family and a lot of my friends. That I could do without. But I think NY's appeal will mainly come in warmer months, and in a sense that it is still a bit different from LA or SF. It still stays up late, it's still big and intimidating (although only in a sense of size, not danger and culture), it's still the new Rome, ands I am still a born native. So I hold on, just not as tight.

Which brings me to a new winter season of posts. Posts that might involve NYC, but only in an anecdotal way, or in a relative way. These posts are my winter in LA posts. And rest assured, they will carry weight and meaning in a NYC sense, because you can take the who-ski out of the what-ski, etc etc.
yada yada. So game on, Venice California...

Remixes and Combos. Like those special edition comics where heroes team up.

Transformers!!!

ILM rocks!

WORKSAFE PORN

http://view.break.com/577249 - Watch more free videos

Palin Couric SNL

I know its supposed to be funny. but really, it's basically one degree shy of the truth.

Navigation System, go fuck yourself

There's no denying that i am in love with my car's navigation system. I have invested over $2000 to fix it twice over the last 4 years. I leave it on all the time, looking at it even when i am making a drive i am very familiar with. first of all, i love maps, and second of all, there is something comforting in the knowledge that my car knows where i am and where i am going at all times. but recently my faith got shook twice on a long solo road trip. the first incident happened up at 9000 feet above sea level in the mountains of Wyoming. I was going over one of the highest passes that interstate 80 takes on it's long journey over and across the continental divide. It was dark and I had about a half tank of gas. but even with that limited fuel, I knew that i could most likely make it to Laramie, a supposedly large town (large by Wyoming standards, which probably meant that there was a bunch of fast food spots and a hotel). what i wasn't sure of, was what exit it would be or if i had to use a secondary road. So i had to depend on my navi and wait for the car to get close enough to see the turns on my 8" by 8" screen.

I started to notice wisps of clouds floating across the road. at first the smoky little puffs resembled the ghosts of large animals like elephants and woolly mammoths floating slowly across the pavement. they were kind of interesting to me and they broke up the monotonous look of the winding yellow and white lines of the pitch black road ahead. I was blasting through them in the same way that you blast through those steam leaks coming up through manholes in the city. they are solid looking until your car blasts through them without any resistance. but to my alarm, these puffy clouds quickly multiplied in frequency, becoming at first a herd of them, and then before i knew it, i was in fog so think that i literally couldn't see more then 10-20 feet ahead of me. i turned on my fog lights, which helped a bit. then it got worse forcing me to turn off my regular headlights because the white splotch the light made in front of my car was almost blinding.

there was one truck that flew by me at about 40 miles an hour. by that point i had slowed to probably 30 mph so as to not fly off the bending road. i had no idea how far of a drop off on either side was, or even if there was a shoulder at all. i tried to chase the truck's red tail lights for a bit, but to see them i had to literally be within 20 feet of them. i'm not one for extreme tailgating in the dark on a lonely mountain pass, so eventually the tail lights got ahead of me and quickly faded into the thick haze.

It was at this nerve racking moment that i looked to my navi monitor for comfort. to my chagrin the fucker had frozen up and gone blank. it's done that once before. It was when i was going to an important party for my grandmother in some god-forsaken part of long island with my sister and both of our girlfriends in the car. of course, that incident didn't leave me and my passengers in a possible life or death situation. unless you find getting lost in Long Island akin to dying. it was only annoying because i had to then call my grandmother for directions after so pompously refusing them...plus i hadn't actually needed the Navi for months since i always knew where i was going. this new and ill-times malfunction had to be the god awfullest worst timing imaginable. to fix it i would have to pull over and restart the car. only i had no idea if there was even a shoulder to pull over on. i couldn't even see signs that were probably just a few feet away. i didn't know if there was an exit or not, if i had missed mine, or even if i was on the right road. even if i had seen an exit, getting off would have been perilous because it would be impossible to see how to get back on or where to go from there. i might end up following a dotted line to nowhere.

so, despite the butterflies in my stomach. despite the sense that i could be in really serious danger if i took a wrong turn or tried to stop on the freeway. i just gripped the wheel and stayed determined to follow what i was pretty sure was still I80 all the way until it started going downhill again. I turned on some Jazz music because that was the best way i could still feel like things were ok, like i was still in the middle of civilization. I was going to have to do this the old fashioned way (old fashioned like 1995). I figured if a bunch of illiterate frontier men could do it by donkey wrapped in dried pelts, then i could manage it in my 740il BMW. but i was both vexed by my usually reliable satellite link cutting me off, and kind of nervous about how to get back to civilization before my gas ran out.

thankfully, about an hour of this crazy soup driving later, i noticed that i needed to brake a lot to keep under 40mph. This was an indication that i finally was descending the backside of the pass. if you can't see any horizon, you lose the ability to judge uphill and downhill except by the way the car speeds up or slows down. 30 minutes after realizing that i must be going downhill i started to notice a red color in the haze. and then all of a sudden, like a sheet being pulled back from my eyes, the fog cleared and i was looking out over a vast valley filled with city lights. I pulled over and restarted the car and the navigation told me i had "arrived". thanks bitch.

the second adventure was even crazier then that one. I was driving down to LA from San Francisco, after spending three days haunting my old city, hanging out with friends whom i didn't realize how much i missed until i saw them. it's amazing how you can become part of a community and then disappear for a year and a half, and then come back to people who greet you like you never left. it's actually a great feeling. i know i have a home there if i should want it back (which i often consider).

anyways, I took the scenic route as i do whenever i am on an official "road trip", but i have learned that that ride can be 10 hours if you do the 1 the whole way. so what i do to compromise, is to drive west on Geary street in San Fran all the way to the beach. get out, walk to the water, say hello to the pacific since it's the first time i've seen it in a while, and then drive south on the 1. it's a gorgeous and intense ride all the way down through the big sur. but really, once you pass the big sur, you might as well head inland and jump on the 5 and shave 3 hours off the second leg of the trip. i decided to let my know-it-all navi find me a route to the 5 from the 1. it came up with one pretty quickly, as a matter of fact it popped up and said to turn in 800 feet. i slowed down quickly and turned onto a small, almost hidden road with a cow barrier. i didn't see any signs and it looked well paved and used. i also had my map set to 25 miles per inch, which sometimes gives a winding road the appearance of a straight road since it doesn't have the resolution to render all the little bends in the road. so in essence, the road looked like a straight shot on my digital map. i also noted that i should have plenty of gas based on the distance to the 5 and what my car said my range was.

What followed the most intense road i have ever travelled. this insane experience didn't happen because my Navi malfunctioned. this one happened because it WORKED. It knew of a road that it really shouldn't have. actually, NOBODY should know about this road. it should NOT be on any map for any reason. well, apparently, as my girl's military brother says "assumption is the mother of all fuck ups". he also says things like "whats wrong with your S.A. (situational awareness)?!" these are both phrases that i should have considered during the split second decision to follow this road. my S.A. was highly FUBAR as i was making several ill informed assumptions.

The road soon started to ascend up into the mountains. I expected this because there's no other way to the central plains then through the mountains. so I was happy to have found a mountain road fully stocked with hairpin turns and awesome views. it was pure driving pleasure, and there was nobody around to spoil my nature experience. the sky was blue with an occasional fluffy cloud and the vegetation was surprisingly thick and green for the end of the summer. my guess was that the mountains were so steep and rugged that the weather pattern was perhaps wetter then other less extreme parts of the coast. there were brilliant purple and yellow mountain flowers and hawks flying over them, hunting for field mice and other small mammals. i was blasting America and Bread to add to the mountain-america drive.

Slowly the road got higher and higher up, to the point where i could see over the edge of the road down thousands of feet to the sea. plus the road was getting narrower and narrower. my wide car was basically just holding the outer edges, and sharp turns became VERY sharp. it got exhausting. an hour of this driving passed and i realized that i was still pretty much at the beginning of the road. i zoomed in and realized that the road was more like the pattern of the brain, or a complex maze you might find in a cognitive exercise book. i realized that my sense of distance had been entirely mislead. i also realized that i couldn't even turn around on the road due to the fact that it was one lane, and there was no shoulder and a sheer drop-off. that's when my situation started to sink in. my gas might not actually do the trick. and i was too far in to consider anything besides continuing along the way. plus, I hadn't seen ANYBODY ELSE ON THE ROAD.

A bit later, after countless blind hairpin turns and steep inclines, the road started to level off and descend again. trees started to appear on the side and i could see that it became a bit less curvy, but it also entered a thick forest. so now i am throwing the car into neutral and coasting as much as i could to try and save gas. the trees were redwoods and eucalyptus. my favorites. the fragrance in the air was pristine and i knew i was in bear/lion country. as soon as i thought that, i came around a turn and stopped short. there were 5 guys, armed to their teeth, wearing paramilitary like outfits standing in the middle of the road. i looked at them...they looked at me. there was a nice long moment. my black BMW with Manhattan plates, their high powered assault rifles and side arms and camouflage. one of them said something to the others and they slowly, reluctantly, cleared a path. I rolled past them and just said "thank you gentlemen"...no response. i watched them carefully in the rear view, getting ready to floor it if they should start taking their rifles off the shoulder straps. this wasn't Kansas, Toto.

So with that surreal moment fresh on my mind. the growing awareness that i could be heading headlong into some para-military training camp or worse, i continued on. the forest got thicker and thicker, the turns got more and more frequent, and the sun became more and more dappled. my sense of imminent disaster was growing and growing with each turn. then, around one of these turns, i was suddenly face to face with 4 motorcycles and their riders. these guys were taking a break in a glade and i was CLEARLY not expected or invited. but they weren't BLOCKING the road, so i nodded and just kept on driving past that scene.

A few more miles and i was starting to check my phone to see if i had any signal in case i needed to call somebody and explain that i was going to die in the mountains of central California. i realized that i could have at least given my coordinates thanks to the same fucking Navi that got me into the situation in the first place. no signal though. i was fucked.

Then I came around another turn and had to stop short facing a military road block. there was a toll booth and a sign saying that i was approaching a military base. Since i was just relieved to see Americans whom i might be on the same side as, i rolled up and stopped to let them approach.

The heavily armed guy who came up to me looked very surprised at my appearance. He asked me what i was doing there and i just pointed at my Navi. "I wanted to get to the 5 and this stupid thing told me to take this road. I just want to get to LA."

He seemed to relax and told me that i had taken a military road and that it goes through a certain fort on its way to the 5. he also said that he could let me through but needed my IDs and registration. I happily gave them up since it meant i wouldn't have to go back and run out of gas on that crazy road. He checked my info and wrote some stuff down and then gave them back to me. he then told me that i couldn't use my cell phone or take any pictures...and that for no reason should I stray whatsoever off the road. I nodded my agreement and said i was sure to just go right through. He also mentioned that there was a single gas station in 30 miles. i had about 80 miles left of gas. PHEWWWWW. i was safe.

At least i thought i was safe. that road, my friends, was not exactly the safest place to be. and i quickly learned why i wouldn't want to stray. there were tanks all over the place, they were practicing maneuvers and blowing shit up on the sides of hills. and there i was, the most lost guy in the state of California, equipped with satellite GPS. in the middle of a military base...an active military base. i don't think i can get specific about this, as i think it's kind of a secretive thing. but i can just say that what i saw, what i drove through was FAR from what i had expected when i set out that morning with a chocolate milk and croissant in hand.

Needless to say, I made it through. I got gas. I got to the 5. Navi, go FUCK yourself.

The Front Fell Off

"the environment is perfectly safe...we're out of time?"

How to deal with financial ruin...

I'm back at a computer again...yay.

Izmir Turkiye and the call to prayer

It was 5AM in Izmir. I had arrived late in the night before, on my way to Ephesus to see the ancient ruins of a roman port city. The only room we could find was down an alley in a very scary part of town. the room had a back door that i couldn't lock and it led to some rather sketchy rooftops. It seemed like a setup to my un-trusting new york self, so i hid my credit cards and blockaded the door with all the furniture in the room and devised a desperate plan to smash a book shelf on any intruder's head as they tried to navigate the pile of stuff in between them and us. i had the key in the lock and knew which direction to turn it even in the dark, and told Amo to head straight out just in case.

I slept fitfully but well, occasionally a strange noise had me lurch forward out of bed, only to realize it was a cat, or a rooster scurrying around in the alley out back. i had no idea what was beyond the alley because in the late hour of arrival i was unable to see anything in the unlit streets beyond. but at 5AM, came the sudden and haunting tone of the Adhan. the call to prayer. it was still a foreign and startling phenomenon to my american ears, but i knew what it was. i opened the window to see the light coming up on the eastern horizon. it showed the silhouette of several minarets and winding dark streets and old ottoman buildings set into large foothills.

at around the same time and slightly offset came the same prayer, from different singers in different mosques in the immediate area. they kind of filled in each other's pauses and acted as a chorus of deep soul wrenching tones. needless to say, it was very moving moment for me. not only marking the end of a long tense night, but opening my vacationing agnostic eyes to a deep seated cultural spiritualism and love of religion that i had never really known before. i saw a cat stop walking across a roof and sit down to watch me, and down the street a rooster began to cuckoo loudly, as if trying to match the power of the broadcast. there was a dog barking and a cool breeze blowing in through the sheer window shade against my face.

i have felt the tug in my heart as a child reading the bible stories about jesus being crucified. i know the sense of awe and humility in pondering god. what god must be capable of, what he/she might think about me personally and what the consequences could be if any one of these religions are right about sin. i am agnostic, i don't know what happens after death but i am capable of grasping that there could be an afterlife, just as quickly as i can believe that there isn't one. i have read Siddhartha by Herman Hesse and believed truly that someone can achieve an enlightenment where they suddenly understand everything. i have looked into a river as he did, and felt that the truth must be so simple, yet so infinitely fantastically impossible to fathom. I have felt the definite sense of leaving my body while deep in meditation and wondered if that meant that i had a soul, a part of infinity and separate from time. but i still don't know what any of my wandering experiences tell me.

what i do know is that this moment in Izmir was something special. it was, i guess, a small window into a large and foreign world. a huge intense religion that stems from one that i am familiar with. they believe in Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and of course, Gabriel. they believe in the total homage to god and really, the rest of it is just cultural. but the belief in one god, one purpose is the same. the overwhelming emotion and focused spirituality of this prayer echoing through the silent sleeping city proved this to me. i had just earlier looked upon the collection of religious artifacts in Topkali Palace in Istanbul and had made assumptions when, after seeing Moses' walking stick, and the golden arm of John the Baptist, i had gazed upon the arsenal of Muhammad. the man had three golden swords and a bow. my judeo-christian mind hadn't quite processed that a holy man could carry around weapons and still be holy. but again, that wasn't the point of the weapons, or the artifacts. it was just the remains of these men, who had loved one god, in a world that loved the elements individually. they had felt a different and maybe "higher" truth even when faced with death and worse. it's very moving, and this call to prayer, on this morning really caught me off guard and overwhelmed me.

then about 2 hours later, PKK blew up a car in the city and injured 19 soldiers. but that's a political battle, not one about god.

I have been in Venice Cali for the last week, and tomorrow i leave for Turkey until the end of the month. I know, I know. Life just won't be the same without my verbiage.

In the meantime, check out these two gems.

my sis's blog. she's on vacation too, so it might just be pics from the wilderness. you can never get enough of the wilderness...
http://jihky.blogspot.com/

my dear friends blog. he has a similar theme to me, only he gets to the point.
http://www.thingsiholddear.com/

The best live performance of the Star Wars theme EVARRRRR!

Oh man. The world without beauty pageants would be a sad, cold, lonely place...

She's got spin moves like Yoda and, clearly, the force is strong with this one. LOVES IT.

I <3 Paris Hilton

"I bet the engineers at Mercedes Benz and McLaren never thought of this problem when they designed the 617 hp and almost half a million dollar SLR McLaren. How do you prevent a celebutard from decapitating herself on gullwing doors?"

Most people I know need to subdue a gag reflex when talking about Paris. But I have always cheered her on as she glides through life with an air of ease that we can all only dream of. She has never pretended to be anything besides a pampered airhead, yet people seem to despise and resent her, or love her, like i do. Almost as if she is stealing her fame from people who would otherwise deserve it. As if truly deserving it, or working for it even matters in today's world! A vast number of people resent her fame like it's all that's wrong with America. I think Britney Spears really holds that title, where Paris seems to define how to play America for what it's worth. Britney was a well packaged and overly produced piece of white trash who left us all wondering how her awful music got on all the radio stations. Her trashiness is now only evident after years of drug and family related decline, and a pot belly. Where Paris is still gliding away in the public eye, regardless of having never really proven to anybody that she has any particular talent. Well I say, Bravo to that. Paris, show us how incredibly vapid we really are. I think we need some real honesty in our media branded lives.

In my book, Paris is the modern version of somebody like Princess Di or Jackie Kennedy. She can merely stand in front of cameras and smile and end up on the cover of every known magazine on the rack. I think that this is because she represents the pinnacle of our society. She is the result of being born at the top. It's a class thing, even though she has none. But, the real reason she has no class, is because nobody cares about class anymore. True old school grace isn't even understood by the masses of today. As Paris has illustrated, a well placed sex tape is as effective a PR maneuver as a ride in the royal carriage to Buckingham Palace.

When Paris got her own TV show I was amazed at how funny she could be. Simply by behaving exactly the way you would expect somebody would when they grow up answering to nobody and getting everything they want. She is American Royalty, get over it America. You are looking in the mirror.

As far as her looks are concerned, I actually never found her attractive until she made me laugh on her show. I mean, she has no tukus, and I am a certified ass man. But I respected her "honesty" and her complete lack of regard for the tightly strung farmers and red staters she was torturing on her show with such reckless abandon. It was a perfect example of how money works, and what's right or wrong about capitalism. She defines freedom, at least the idea of freedom that we champion here. So it was that she appealed to me by using her perceived flaws and turning the whole thing around on its head. that made her HOT.

here she is charming a grumpy bus passenger she calls "Milly"

Now she has impressed me yet again. Her self-spoofing ad knocking McCain raises her up another notch in my book. She knows what people think of her and she knows how to make it funny. Bravo Ms.Thing, you go girl.

See more funny videos at Funny or Die