I thought Michael Jackson died 20 years ago – so to speak

For those of us who grew up in the “Off the Wall” and “Thriller” era of the late 70’s and early 80’s, we mourned the loss of Michael Jackson 20 years ago when he became something we didn’t recognize anymore.  The “pop culture” mindset of our lives has not crossed paths with Michael Jackson for a long time.  He hasn’t been in our thoughts or in our CD players for many years.  We mourned the fact that the young black man, who broke down racial barriers through his music and his attitude, had turned into a mere shadow of himself, unrecognizable to us physically and plagued by accusations of pedophilia in horrific detail.

It is sad – sad when anybody dies as there are always friends and families who will be overcome with extreme sadness and disbelief.  And most of us know what that feels like.  But sadder, is an entire generation who wrote Michael off a long time ago.  And now it is difficult to muster up the emotions again.  I can’t say that I miss him or his music.  When I look back at clips of him singing, and I mean really singing, it blows my mind.  When he was 10 years of, Michael Jackson could belt out a ballad or a dance tune with a full voice, and a full vibrato.  He sang from his gut and from his diaphragm.  That all stopped 20 years ago when his music became sounds and grunts and squeals.  I had not heard him actually hold a note, like a real singer does, in years.  His voice was meek.  He sang like a frightened little girl.  So yes, we mourned for Michael Jackson.  We just don’t’ feel the need to do it again now.

No matter how talented  Mr. Jackson was, it is difficult to get past the fact that he was accused of child molesting; and not just once.  I believe there is some truth to this.  I just don”t believe these allegations are accidental or part of some conspiracy.  We’ve all heard the details.   Maybe he never touched a child in the grotesque way that we all know can happen.  But how close to the edge of molestation can you go before it actually IS molestation.  Do we want to cut the slice that narrow?  Do we want to say, “well he never actually penetrated a little boy with his penis or finger (sorry but it needs to be said) so he’s not guilty.   Or maybe “well, they were naked together but he only briefly rubbed up against the 12 year old boy after giving him some Jesus Juice”.   While he was acquitted, I  don’t need a legal dictionary to define a crime; or what is inappropriate.

All of that aside, my personal belief is that Michael Jackson struggled with a lot of things, mentally, emotionally, physically, and financially; all affecting how the world saw him and how he saw himself.  He was at times indignant about the way the public perceived him; as if he had no responsibility in the matter.

So Michael Jackson has now died.  He was preparing for a “come back” tour and nobody knows how that would have all turned out.  Maybe at 50 years old he mellowed a bit and understood how is actions with young children have consequences.

I mean no disrespect by anything in this posting.  This is simply my opinion of the events as I see them.  I do feel badly for his family.  I wish the media would leave them alone.  But I also wish the media would leave US alone.

The wheels on the Republican bus have officially fallen off

I didn’t think that the Republican Party could fall out of favor any further than it has.  But in true Republican fashion, they never let you down when it comes to disappointment.

I would not have believed if I didn’t see it.  Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher blamed Barack Obama for the violence and death on the streets of Iran.  He said that if Obama had spoken up and denounced the violence three days ago, the violence would have been avoided.  That woman who was shot and died on live television would be alive if it weren’t for Barack Obama.  Yes, this guy actually said it.

And what if John McCain was our President.  According to his recent remarks, we would be at war with another Islamic country; further degrading the standing of the United States around the world.  And thousands upon thousands more would be dead.  McCain couldn’t even answer this question:  Is Barack Obama on the side of Majmud Ahmadinajad or is he on the side of the factions that are protesting an unfair election.  McCain said “Well I know what side I”M on” insinuating that Barack Obama was on the side of the tyranical President.  He’s kidding right?  No he’s not.

Then, Republicans like radio host and columnist Mark Savage, and a Maryland Republican women’s group, and many others too numerous to mention, have been, just in the last few days, comparing Barack Obama to Hitler.  They are litterally trying to make direct comparisons between Obama’s actions and policies to Hitler’s reign of terror.  It is amazingly ridiculous and hateful, and so far off base that I can’t figure out who these people are trying to convince to join or support their party.  They should have stuck with the idea that Barack’s birth certificate is a fake.  At least that is a conspiracy theory the right wingers can REALLY get behind. 

And now Mark Sanford, South Carolina Governor, admits to infidelity with an Argentinean woman, which explains where he was over Father’s Day Weekend when neither his wife, his sons, nor his administration  knew where he was.  And all the while they thought he was hiking the Appalachian Trail.  He was lost in the woods, alright, metaphorically speaking.  I can’t wait to see how Sanford’s close friend, Joe Scarborough handles this tomorrow morning on “Morning Joe”.  Will he defend Sanford using tax payer money to go to Argentina for a booty call?  Just this morning (Wednesday) Joe was defending Sanford’s behavior.

This is like a bad plot in a bad daytime soap opera.  Even Luke and Laura knew when it was time to give up the Ice Princess plot line.

So Mark Sanford goes on TV today and gives a very long list of all the people he hurt; beginning with his sons.  The young people behind him in his news conference were giggling.  I don’t know who they were or why they were there.  But it was sad, demeaning, and even somewhat humorous.  If there were ever a reason to have a pre-planned speech or tele-prompters, that news conference was it.  This is a man who said President Clinton should resign for such sexually deviant behavior.  Well, Mr. Sanford, will you now resign, because you should based on your own moral compass.

Is it any wonder why the Republican Party is falling apart.   What comes next; calling Barack Obama a extra-terrestrial being while some other Republican congressman gets arrested for molesting pre-school boys. 

Barack Obama is poised to strike and get whatever he wants out of Congress; Republicans or Democrats.  Now is the time Barack.  DO IT!  Get health care passed.  Clean up the environment, Get all the troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan, create millions of jobs, send America over into the financial abyss; finance our asses off.  Who cares?  It can’t possibly be worse than anything that brain trust we call the GOP can come up with.

And just yesterday, the GOP had begun to lay out plans to take back Congress in 2010.  Sorry guys, I don’t think so.

And the cherry on top?  Rush Limbaugh said about Sanford – “he could have been our JFK”.

I can’t even keep up anymore with the train wreck and casualties that make up the GOP.

It’s time to Fade to Black.

Mika Brzezinski gloms onto Scarborough even more than usual

If Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough were on a media tour for the television show “Morning Joe” then I would understand.  But right now they are on a book tour for Scarborough’s book “The Last Best Hope”.  They openly talk about their tour and how Mika also signs Joe’s book.

Now I’ve heard of riding someone’s coat tails but this is ridiculous.  Even if I were a fan of Joe Scarborough’s work, why would I want someone who didn’t write his book to sign it for me.  If Mika Brzezinski wants to sign a book, let her write one.  Or she can sign one of her father’s books posthumously when the time comes.

I find this just a bit odd.  It’s one thing if they are on, or claiming to be on, a combined press tour for “Morning Joe” AND Joe’s book.  But it’s a different thing entirely when they refer to these events as “book signings” and then Mika participates in the dog and pony show followed by her signing Joe’s book right along side him.  I really, really don’t get it.  And I don’t understand why nobody has questioned this.  I keep doing Google searches and I can’t find anything about anyone questioning why Mika is signing Joe’s book.

So now, along with her making faces at everything people say on that show, and along with her feigned holier-than-thou attitude towards anything slightly off-color, and despite the fact that she acts like an idiot as she repeats everything that Joe says (and then purrs like a kitten, it’s weird), and then makes these little orgasmic sounds as she feigns embarrassment when someone call her pretty, she NOW signs someone else’s published work?

I watch “Morning Joe” most mornings, not because of Joe or Mika, but because they have guests that I respect like “Newsweek” editor Jon Meacham, one of my personal heros.  For a time I thought putting up with Mika Brzezinski was something I was willing to do for guests like that.  But I’m not so sure anymore.

Restaurant Review – Stugazzi’s – Springvale, Maine

This is my first restaurant review.  I don’t know why I haven’t done one before; I am a bit of a foodie and have some basic training from culinary school.  I like good food and I think I know what good food is.  So maybe I’ll do more, we’ll see.

When I moved to Maine in 2001 the first thing I missed was the incredibly good food and restaurant choices I had in Connecticut.  Every time a new restaurant opens here in my neck of the woods, I have high hopes, and I’m usually disappointed.

With little fanfare, a small Italian restaurant called “Stugazzi’s” opened in my neighborhood.  When I say that I mean my apartment building and Stugazzi’s share a common parking lot and dumpster.  Our dumpster sharing should have been an omen.

When I walked into Stugazzi’s out of the blue on a very rainy Friday afternoon, I was a bit confused.  I saw a few tables and a big window cut-out through which you could see the pizza oven’s and the kitchen.  The cut-out had a large flat bottom that resembled a counter and I saw a cash register there so I thought maybe it was a walk-up window to place an order.  To the right there was a door to what looked like a dining room but there was no sign that said “Please wait to be seated” or “Please seat yourself” or “Order Here”; nothing.  I later noticed that other customers walked in with the same confused look on their faces which seemed to say “Where do we go, who do we talk do, how do I order food here?”.

In any case I stood at the “window-counter” staring at the pizza ovens directly behind it.  I stood there for several minutes before a man approached me, somewhat gruff, and asked “Can I help you?”.  I wanted to say “Yes, can you tell me how I eat in this establishment, I could use some instruction because there is nothing here that is welcoming me in” – but I didn’t.

I asked how long it would take to get an order of spaghetti and meatballs.  My personal opinion is that in any Italian restaurant, you can get a good feel for the food by ordering the spaghetti and meatballs.  If that’s good, chances are the rest of the food will be good too.  I know that sounds oversimplified but I swear it’s true.  I have proved it time and time again.

The answer I received (and I should have known how this would go by this answer) was “just a few minutes”.  Without thinking I said OK.  The man wrote some stuff down on what looked like an order pad, and asked me if it was to-go.  I said yes and walked away.  During the next few minutes I sat on a chair at a table and watched the other befuddled customers walk in.   I don’t want to overstate the customer base here.  There was me, a table with what looked like a mom and dad with their child, and another couple sitting at a table trying to decide what to order and if they were going to eat it there or take it home.

So I sat and thought and it suddenly dawned on me (Friday afternoon after a long week at work is not my best “thinking” time) “A FEW MINUTES?’  Nothing good can come from that; I just had a feeling.  If he could fix me an order of spaghetti and meatballs in “a few minutes” I had a feeling the pasta wasn’t going to be cooked to order.  In fact it was probably cooked several hours earlier, if not the previous day, and was being dunked into hot water to “revive” it.

It was hot and humid in the restaurant.  So when the gruff gentlemen literally yelled out “SPAGHETTI AND MEATBALLS TO GO!” I walked up to the counter to pay.  I thought to myself “There are only 6 people in this room, he couldn’t have said “Sir your order is ready” or something like that?  His only option was to yell out “SPAGHETTI AND MEATBALLS TO GO! as if there were throngs of people there and he couldn’t remember which of the 6 of us placed this order not more than 4 minutes ago?

I paid, walked out, and went home.  When I got home and opened up the package this is what I saw.  A to-go food tin with the plastic cover, wrapped tightly in wads of Saran Wrap.  On top of this package was a few slices of “Italian” bread (the quotes mean there was nothing Italian about it) that was stale and dry and accompanied by butter “packets”; the kind where you have to peel the top off.  I poked the bread with my finger and decided immediately it belonged in the dumpster that I shared with the restaurant from which I just bought this food.

I dont’ know how they did it but the texture of the pasta wasn’t that bad.  The “sauce” however, was another story.  I don’t know how you can call what was on the pasta “sauce”.   “Sauce” indicates something that would slowly ooze across the plate if you were to tip the plate.  There was nothing saucy about it.  It was globs of tomato paste.  It was the same texture as the ketchup gunk that collects around the lip of the ketchup bottle.  And with barely a little more flavor.  It didn’t run, bleed, or coat.  It just sat there in a clump.  It was, in a word, disgusting. 

I noticed on the take out menu that there were some dishes that reference “homemade sauce”.  Spaghetti and Meatballs was not one of those dishes that made this reference.  So are there different “sauces”?  Do other dishes get a  delicious homemade sauce with a refined viscosity and the S & M get the gloppy tomato paste?  Somehow I doubt it.  I was so hungry when I brought my food home that day that I actually ate some of it.  The funny thing is that is wasn’t the pasta that filled me up, it was the sauce.  The sauce was very filling.  The meatballs were obviously bought frozen from a food distributor, or from Costco or BJ’s.  The texture was OK but they had a strange garlic flavor.  If they were made from scratch in the restaurant, they need a new recipe.  A recipe that end up with a meatball tasting like pork and beef, as opposed to garlic and THAT SAUCE.

All in all, the Spaghetti and Meatballs had the refined Italian flavor of something you would get if you ordered Italian food at Denny’s, or Applebees.

There are many interpretations of the word Stugazzi in Italian; everything from “stupid” to “idiot” to “d#%k face”.  I’m not sure which one of those apply here but I know one of them does. 

Stugazzi’s in Springvale, Maine, is an abomination of Italian cuisine.   Here’s a description (verbatim) of their world famous Buffalo Chicken Alfredo:  “Fresh  buffalo tenders serviced in alfredo sauce and poured over Fettuccine”.  Sound Good?  Yes, this restaurant has pulled off the impossible and married Italian food with buffalo chicken fingers.  Stugazzi!!!

What the HELL is going on at Morning Joe on MSNBC?

One of the many disappointments of cable news programming is what I call “screen clutter”.  Between the network logo, the show logo, the news crawler, the date and time, and the guest’s name and title, there is not much room on the screen for the show itself.

Further, this morning on Morning Joe, they were talking about the morning newspapers, like they do every morning.  So yet another portion of the screen had certain headlines from papers around the country.  All of this screen clutter is annoying.  But here’s the real issue.  What they had on the screen for headlines made absolutely no sense.

Picture it, in the lower left quadrant of the screen was the logo of a newspaper, like the Washington Post logo, and then underneath that a headline from a Page 1 story in that publication.  Here are a few examples verbatim.  Tell me if you know what the heck these “headlines” are talking about:

1) Mountaintop Mining to get more environmental scrutiny, Obama officials say” (Washington Post)

2) Rate Rise: Clouds Recover (Wall Street Journal)

3) Fed Emails Bash BOFA Chief Lewis (Wall Street Journal)

4) Russians Outfox U.S. in Latest Great Game (Wall Street Journal)

5) Chocolate-Bunny Case Reaches High Court (Wall Street Journal)

OK, I’m not necessarily a news hound but I like to think I keep up with most of what’s going on in the world.  BUT I DON’T KNOW WHAT THE HELL ANY OF THESE “HEADLINES” ARE TALKING ABOUT.  I checked my calendar to see if it was April Fool’s Day, but it wasn’t.  I have a DVR so I went back and watched it again.  And then again.  And then on the last time I wrote them all down because I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.  I shouldn’t have to go to each of these publications, or do a Google search, just to understand what the headline means or is referring to.  And the wording and subject matter is so ridiculous that I already don’t CARE what they are talking about.  I think I finally understand what phrase “East Coast Media Elite” means.

Somebody help me!