It needs to come out at the downtown San Mateo cineplex. Ever since I first saw the trailer two months ago I've been dying to see it! I watched the trailer three times just for that line,"Get off my lawn..."

I didn't realize it was supposed to be some sort of artistic triumph...the critics are hailing it like some sort of Cannes Film Festival tour de force...I just thought it looked entertaining..."Dirty Harry In Retirement."

I hope it comes out tomorrow.

He and Dinah wore jeans. Their majestic ceremony was concluded in five minutes. Something to shoot for...Who can pull off a three minute wedding?

A smart person recently asked me why we aren't hearing more about the Charlatan King, Jack Madoff.

I admit that I am baffled by this whole story. I do not get what he did, or how he did it. All I know is that he managed to steal fifty billion dollars from a lot of people and somehow vaporize the wealth in the process. I'm not sure any of the talking hairdos at CNBC could explain it clearly either.

Which scares the hell out of me. People like Madoff don't just give investment and capitalism a bad name. They make economically ignorant people like me want to totally avoid investment in anything altogether, forever. People like Madoff make me want to keep my money in a checking account forever, if not just keep it in a safe or well-fortified coffee can in my house.

If somebody can explain Madoff to me, I'd be grateful. It's not enough to tell me that this satanic shark ran a Ponzi scheme. I know that much, I just don't know what that means.

When I was fourteen, I accepted Larry Bird as my Lord and Savior. Consequently, I think the Messiah from French Lick offers modern American men a useful model for the mechanics of matrimony...

Larry had a longtime girlfriend, Dinah Mattingly. After thirteen years of dating Dinah (and the demise of his cherished Doberman, Klinger...), Larry popped the question to his beloved in a manner that every American male should emulate...

While stopped at a light in downtown French Lick, Larry reached into the glove compartment of his Ford pickup, pulled out a small box, blew the dust off the box, and handed the ring inside the box to Dinah with the tender words, "You can wear this if you want..."

When they eventually tied the knot, the happy couple had their ceremony in the garage of Larry's French Lick, with wedding cake in the backyard, while Larry and the few guests went out and shot hoops.

Frugal AND tasteful...

Was Randy Johnson such a good move for the Giants? Isn't he like, 85 years old?

And that nickname..."The Big Unit"...it always makes me think of the Wayne's World sketches from SNL..."Check out the unit on that guy..."

I don't have much advice for prospective grooms, but what I have is platinum...Here it is, an ounce of atomic truth, for sharing with the universe...

Grooms, now hear this...when it comes to the wedding day, YOU DO NOT MATTER...at best, you are barely relevant...I say this, not out of bitterness, but to give you peace...once you grasp and embrace the great matrimonial truth that the wedding day has almost nothing to do with you, you will the warm bathwater of serenity wash over you, and you can say the glorious words uttered by Kevin Pollak in "A Few Good Men," I have no responsibilities here whatsoever..." You can chill out, knowing that there is no pressure on you at all.

I repeat, grooms are barely relevant to weddings. Weddings are all about brides. It is Queen For A Day time with the brides. Grooms are mildly interesting, but not remotely essential to the splendor and the pageantry of the day. Brides however, are central. It is all about them. We don't really need to be present. A cardboard cutout of the groom would suffice for pretty much every wedding. Go that route and you can save on the tux and several hours of pre-game and post-game photographs...

In fact, I can now come clean about the fact that I did not attend my own wedding...I had a very convincing mannequin step in for me, while I lounged at home watching Larry Bird highlight films...I hear that I looked good on the dance floor though, which is cool.

Seriously though, grooms, DO NOT expend an ounce of energy trying to direct or control your wedding ceremony. Total waste of time. Total waste of lifeforce. All you do is show up. Once you gotten that great truth drilled into your cranium, you'll just feel so much better.

Here endeth the lesson...

The best thing to ever appear on American television was "The Wire." Period. There are other great shows, there are other good shows, but the best program to ever emerge on The Electronic Hearth in this country was "The Wire."

Most people have never seen the show, which is downright tragic. If you haven't, I emphatically urge you to treat yourself to the most amazing program ever. I suspect that for a lot of people renting "The Wire" feels like a homework assignment, like reading War and Peace. If you give it a chance, watching the first couple of episodes, you will become hopelessly engrossed. There is no other movie or television show that has ever captured so much, so accurately, with such artistic skill.

If you watch "The Wire" you'll find that much of the rest of television falls woefully short, even the good shows. I loved "The Shield," until I saw "The Wire." Now I see that "The Shield," at its best, was a really good show, but not on par with "The Wire." I still love "Mad Men" and "Friday Night Lights," but as GREAT as they are, they have not consistently displayed the excellence and authenticity of "The Wire."

If I had to describe the greatness of "The Wire," in a sentence, I would express it this way...There has never been any dramatic series on television that has been so deeply, overwhelmingly real and true as "The Wire."

If you have kids, put them to bed early, and watch this show...sooner rather than later...

If you're in the mood for something majestic, bombastic, and otherwise musically rousing, I'd like to recommend some baroque classical music this holiday season to bring out your inner eighteenth century monarch...

I've been on a Handel binge of late...Water Music, Royal Fireworks Music (makes me want to hoist the Union Jack and colonize something in the name of the King and Anglicanism...), and the magnum opus, Messiah. Handel's Messiah is as ecclesiastical as I get these days, but it truly defines masterpiece.

J.S. Bach's Brandenburg Concertos are also quite scintillating, if not quite so imperialistic. I also recommend The Passion of St. Matthew, which some of you might recall from the opening and close of "Casino." When asked what music NASA should send into space to introduce our species to other potential lifeforms, William F. Buckley responded, "We could send the complete works of J.S. Bach...but that would be boasting." Word, WFB. In fact, I imagine JSB and WFB doing a jam session in Heaven right now (Buckley allegedly played a mean harpsichord).

I love baroque classical. Some classical makes you want to take a long nap. Baroque music makes you want to conquer something, the seven seas, North America, or in my case, laundry.

Christmas Day was bad enough...the collapse at 2:51 in the fourth to the Shaggy Spaniard was dismaying...but then to completely lay a giant flaming turd in Oakland before the lowly crackhead Warriors...Aaargh...

Our guys played REALLY poorly. Nothing more profound than that. They pistolwhipped Sacabama like a YBA team two nights ago, 108-63, but it's not enough, especially with LBJ and the Cavs breathing down their necks in the East. Tonight they need to show they can beat Portland. The Jailblazers are a GOOD young team, a team of destiny, the Western Conference version of the Atlanta Hawks. Boston needs to step up and dispatch them ON THE ROAD...

Frankly, it's not the Lakers who concern me. Boston handles them in a seven game series, IF they're even in the Finals...It's getting past the Cavs and a lesser extent Orlando that worries me most. I wouldn't be surprised to see a Cleveland-Houston Finals this year...maybe Celtics-Houston...

Tipoff at 7pm tonight in Portland...

"When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal."
-Richard Nixon

"The President wants me to argue that he is as powerful a monarch as Louis XIV, only four years at a time, and is not subject to the processes of any court in the land..."
-James D. St. Clair, Richard Nixon's counsel, arguing before the
Supreme Court in U.S. v. Nixon (1974).

As timely as ever...and lest the Obama fans get overly smug, don't think that a liberal Democratic president is any less susceptible to the delusions of grandeur and dementia of power than a conservative Republican...

Should Obama not work out, I think the nation needlook no further than VH 1 for its next Chief Executive. "Celebrity Rehab" is my favorite educational program (I think it should run after Sesame Street on PBS), and we can all agree that nobody exudes healing with firmness like Dr. Drew Pinsky.

After watching him patiently duel with Gary Busey, fend off Jeff Conaway, and talk that weird tattooed guy off the roof in the middle of the night, can anybody doubt that Putin, Hugo Chavez, and the Middle East would be child's play for Dr. Drew? After reuniting Tawny Kitaen with her emotionally estranged children, can there be any question that the bond markets will be putty in the messianic palms of The Man From Pasadena?

Just think about it America...

My wife/consigliere has a theory as to why the world is collapsing, and since she's several orders of magnitude ahead of me in wisdom, I tend to subscribe to her thesis...

In a nutshell...the demise of the family dinner hour...

You ponder that. I think there's something to it. I know that I never miss dinner at our house, and that if it's an hour long I'm awfully well-fed, and therefore content with the world...

Never underestimate the eloquence and power of a well-timed BA...

Obama should have this guy in his Cabinet...Postmaster General or something...

That flying sucks?...I mean really, there are county transit bus lines that are more comfortable than the Bataan Death March with luggage that is commercial flight today...You get folded, packed, and fastened into something called a "seat" that was discarded from enhanced interrogation at Gitmo, flush against two other hapless souls to work on your blood clots and bladder endurance...And then...

They add children...small children...with lungpower...

It's one thing if you're Harrison Ford or Tom Cruise with your own private Spitfire or Spirit of St. Louis mock-up or whatever, but for the rest of the Boat People, commercial flight is galactically overrated...

Aren't we supposed to have our own jetpack by now anyway? Wasn't that the point of the space race, beating the Russians to the moon?

Gospel. Gospel Jones...

The Sports Center opportunities for NFL running back Gospel or NBA forward Gospel or MLB outfielder Gospel are too rich to pass up...Imagine the highlights commentary...

Seriously...why do we have them? Nothing is accomplished. In the age of email, why does anybody have to take time out of the workday for these contrived mini-conventions? Information can be relayed so much more efficiently and impersonally with email.

If I'm actually meeting with somebody, face-to-face, it needs to be for social reasons, to generate mirth and good times. In the workplace though, there's no point. It's an annoying waste of time.

Let's stop them.

On that note, I'm making a doughnut run...more later...

My wife throws great parties at our place, of which I am an adjunct component (dishwashing czar), but the food is good, company convivial, so, it's cool.

The one thing about having people over though is that she is relentlessly fastidious about cleaning our place before guests arrive...I mean, streets of Singapore clean, Disneyland in the 50s clean...and there is nothing messy about our place to begin with! There's only two of us here, no kids, but nonetheless, she taps into her inner fascist and goes after the miniscule quantity of squalor with vengeful ferocity. After the cleaning cyclone has blown through, one is NOT to manufacture any new mess. In fact, one would be well-advised not to move, for fear of generating some barely perceptible quantity of mess.

Which has me feeling at times that I am an exhibit in a wax museum...and if we were to run with that idea, it could be entertaining for the public.

Seat me in the big chair, wrap my right hand around a Henry Weinhard's, put a velvet rope around me, and call me an exhibit...people could file through like it was Mount Vernon or Monticello to see all of our rooms, with the tour capped off by an awestruck gaze at the Lord of the Manor, at his ease...

For men in a relationship, the most alarming four words are, "we need to talk."

Ummm, no we don't. WE don't need to talk. I'm quite comfortable over here in my inert and serene silence.

YOU want to talk AT me about what I'VE done wrong...usually at length...

"We need to talk"....Danger Will Robinson, Danger...

For some reason, American presidents have come to embrace the term "czar" for various executive branch appointments. Obama has an "energy czar", quite possibly a "car czar," Dubya had an "intelligence czar," and I think Reagan had a "drug czar." I don't quite get the affection for the term czar, since most Russian czars were totally evil and incompetent. Like, why would we want to duplicate that managerial model? Why would we look at some problem in our society and say, "you know what, we need a CZAR for that, to do for infrastructure what Nicholas II and Rasputin did for Russia in World War I...good stuff."

Nevertheless, if we're going to have a flurry of czars, I'd like to make a gift of myself to the nation as the new federal laundry czar. I have heard Obama's call, I have heard the trumpets sound, and I am offering up my talents to the country accordingly.

At the zenith of my powers, I've done EIGHT loads in a day. I'm especially good with towels. Downside, I tend to dry everything on high, so the nation may need to get used to walking around in crispy clothes...

Is there anything more eternal in this life than government programs and "Law and Order?"

So reassuring in these turbulent times...like a bridge over troubled water...Jerry Orbach will ease your mind...

One of my former students passed away Sunday morning in a car accident on Highway 85. Sophie was a consistently cheerful, kind, and warm-hearted member of my fifth period A.P. U.S. History class, a good student and an even better human being. During my time at Lincoln I've had the pleasure and the privilege of teaching all three Belknap sisters, and I can only imagine how painful and devastating this tragedy is for them and the parents who produced such wonderful young people.

My deepest condolences and sympathies for the Belknap family in this time of sorrow...

Sophie was a supremely good egg. She'll be greatly missed.

I cannot be too effusive in my accolades for the superb film version of "Doubt" featuring the twin thespian towers of Meryl Streep and P.S. Hoffman. I emphatically urge the masses to get to a cineplex and take in this thought-provoking drama with the wonderfully medieval trappings...You don't have to be Catholic (or in my case, raised Catholic before I gave it up for Lent...saw that hole in the wire and scrambled through it like McQueen in "The Great Escape") to fully savor the cerebral pleasures of this duel...There are at least four Oscars to be handed out for this magnificent picture, three of them for searing performances that will rattle about in your consciousness for days after the final credits roll...

What fascinates me however is the cascade of vituperation by film critics for Meryl Streep's character, Sister Aloysius, the fearsome nun and parochial school principal at the core of the film. Suffice to say, a majority of them find the character wholly malevolent, irredeemably reactionary, vicious, and demonic.

I don't know what it says about me, but I thought that she was the most admirable character in the entire story! I remember thinking the same thing when I saw Cherry Jones in the part onstage (Cherry Jones by the way was the equal of Ms. Streep...her performance was utterly electrifying...). I completely "got" where Sister Aloysius was coming from, and I am genuinely baffled by the critical castigation of the character.

Perhaps it is my fourteen years as a secondary teacher, perhaps it is my inner predilection for Franco-style fascism, but Sister Aloysius completely resonates with me from the first moment that she rises from the back of the church and lurches down the aisle to administer discipline and quash the faintest sign of disorder and disrespect amid the "progressive" priest's homily on the virtues of moral vacillation, excuse me, doubt. There is something wonderfully, intrinsically conservative about Sister Aloysius...conservative in the sense that she is a realist about human nature, particularly that of unformed children and the inherently fallen nature of humanity...She has "The Lord of the Flies" in her DNA...conservative in the sense that like all true conservatives she cherishes order and is wary, if not outright hostile and skeptical towards change, knowing, as George Will said, "that most new ideas are bad." Her antennae for evil is highly refined, and she does not shrink from defending the flock from the wolves in the face of a rigidly patriarchal hierarchy.

While she is ridiculous in her resistance to trivia like the inclusion of "Frosty the Snowman," in the Christmas Pageant, she is also the fierce and unyielding lioness, defending her vulnerable charges from seemingly affable serpents in the garden, as well as themselves.

To be utterly blunt, I don't care how liberal and enlightened you think you are, if you have kids in school, you'd much rather have a Sister Aloysius type watching over your children than the "progressive" and charismatic Father Flynns. To paraphrase Nicholson in "A Few Good Men," you want her on that wall, you need her on that wall!

I think I must have flunked the basic test of the play and the movie, because I came out of both seeing Sister Aloysius as an unqualified hero...but see it for yourself...it's excellent.

This devout Luddite technophobe is going to attempt online blogging commentary on current events...one small step for man, one giant leap, so forth...What ensues are my random ruminations on all manner of current events, as my whims dictate...While seldom profound, they will hopefully be sporadically entertaining...

For openers, let me share a supremely cool quote that I read the other day in the opening pages of Jon Meacham's "American Lion" on the life of Andrew Jackson...Jackson once declared, "I was born for a storm, and a calm does not suit me."

Born for a storm! How cool is that!! Doesn't that just scream movie title, or at least HBO miniseries? I almost entitled this blog Born For A Storm, but it's really inappropriate for my personality...Born For Mild Breezes and Partly Cloudy Skies would be more fitting...

Okay, more to come...