I awoke with a clear head this morning...one of the benefits of "maturity," I suppose. Last evening's imbibing was limited to a failed experiment with Drambuie and Soda, which, a trendy male model-spokesperson on TV assured me (falsely) I would enjoy. I managed to choke down about a third of the contents of an Old-Fashioned tumbler before tossing the remainder down the drain; replacing the contents of the glass with three fingers of Oban. (Ah! MUCH better!) Drambuie and Soda tastes a LOT like Nyquil, and that is not a favorable comparison. I like Drambuie, but in future I will continue to drink it neat, and in small quantities.
Midnight came and went, and I was in bed at a decent hour. For once this week.
Here are a couple of light-weight items from today's WaPo I found entertaining during my morning read...
The List: What's In and Out for 2006. The opening graf:
These things are starting to feel less like Lists and more like Dear John letters to the idea of mass culture. If you haven't heard, it's all over -- that American Top 40/weekend box office/Nielsen family notion of common experience, the way we gather 'round for important moments and horrific TV and the bad hairdos and the belted, pink overcoats that we all get around the same time. It's a heckuva job, Brownie, managing such a socio-politico-pop-culture disaster. We did the flyover this morning and it's all gone. It's all flotsam. It's Anderson Cooper on a pontoon down there, waving and crying and blogging.A fascinating list, with various and interesting links to WaPo stories from 2005. I particularly liked the travel article on Buenos Aires...made me want to get up and GO. The other impact this list/story had on me was to make me feel incredibly out of touch with the culture. Which, of course, I AM...if your principal definition of culture is all about "personalities," movies, fashion, and TV shows.
And then there's A Year on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, by Dave Barry, who isn't as funny as I remember him being once upon a time. Barry constructs a year-in-review featuring riffs on Tom DeLay, Lance Armstrong, Michael Jackson, Greta Van Susteran, and Delta Air Lines. Samples:
(March) In economic news, financially troubled Delta Air Lines announces that it will no longer offer pillows on its flights, because passengers keep eating them. But the economy gets a boost when the jobless rate plummets, as hundreds of thousands of unemployed cable TV legal experts are hired to comment on the trial of Michael Jackson. Jackson is charged with 10 counts of being a space-alien freakadelic weirdo. Everybody agrees this will be very difficult to prove in California.and...
But by far the biggest story in August is Hurricane Katrina, a massive, deadly storm that thrashes Florida, then heads into the Gulf of Mexico. For decades, experts have been warning that such a storm, if it were to hit New Orleans, would devastate the city; now it becomes clear that this is exactly what is about to happen. For days, meteorologists are on television warning, dozens of times per hour, that Katrina will, in fact, hit New Orleans with devastating results. Armed with this advance knowledge, government officials at the local, state and federal levels are in a position to be totally, utterly shocked when Katrina -- of all things -- devastates New Orleans. For several days, chaos reigns, with most of the relief effort taking the form of Geraldo Rivera, who, by his own estimate, saves more than 170,000 people.OK, maybe Barry IS as funny as I remember him being.
FEMA director Michael Brown, after conducting an aerial survey, reports that "the situation is improving," only to be informed that the area he surveyed was actually Phoenix. For her part, Greta Van Susteren personally broadcasts many timely reports from Aruba on how the Katrina devastation will affect the ongoing Natalee Holloway investigation.
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