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July 26, 2010
Sarah, Oh, Sarah
On his epic 1976 album (kids, ask your parents) Desire, Bob Dylan closes the album with the haunting ballad Sara. The chorus is: “Sara, oh Sara, so easy to look at, so hard to define.” I can’t help but think of our own Sarah, Sarah Palin, whom I’ll admit, is easy to look at, but I’ll take a stab at defining her: ambitious numbskull.
Once again, Sister Sarah was in the news recently for tweeting that “Peaceful Muslims” should “refudiate” (my spell check is going to be working overtime in this one) the building of a mosque near the Ground Zero site. Presumably, she meant “repudiate” or “refute.” Okay, she made a mistake. It happens. We all make mistakes.
After much mocking from the left, instead of acknowledging her mistake she gave the left more ammunition by digging in her heels and defending the remark.
“Refudiate,' 'misunderestimate,' 'wee-wee'd up,’” “English is a living language” was her follow up tweet (although English might want to commit suicide when she gets through with it). I’ll give her that she meant “repudiate” and that she was quoting George W. Bush’s “misunderestimate,” but what the hell she was trying to communicate with “wee-wee’d up” is beyond me. Is that her version of “effed up”?
Indeed, new words do get made up now and then. A dictionary from ten years ago wouldn’t have contained the word “tweet.” However, that word was coined to define a new invention, the ‘tweet.” Sister Sarah seems to have created a new word because she felt like it. She noted that “Shakespeare liked to coin new words too. Got to celebrate it!”
So, Sarah Palin is the new William Shakespeare?
I fear what she might do to The Bard’s epic words.
“To be or maybe ought not to be”
“Good night, good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow! But for $100,000 I’ll come back again!”
“O Romeo, Romeo. Where the heck ya been, Romeo?”
“What’s in a name? Whatever I say is!”
“Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.” Okay, I can see her saying that.
“Alas, poor Yorick. He was killed by Obama’s Death Panel.”
Yes, how can we forget the government-run “Death Panel.” She worried that “my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome (she has no problem using her kids for political purposes when it suits her) will have to stand in front of Obama's 'death panel' so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their 'level of productivity in society.” Well, despite the high unemployment rate, I don’t think anybody will be able to apply any time soon for a job on the government “Death Panel.”
Indeed, had anyone actually proposed such a thing, it would have been horrendous but of course, nobody ever was proposing this.
She not only makes up words, though. She actually has created a new government agency. In an interview with ABC News, she stated that there was a “Department of Law at The White House.”
She claims to be against Big Govenrment, yet with that statement she single handedly created a new bureaucracy because the is no such agency as “The Department of Law.”
Had she become vice president, she might have gotten quite lost in the White House wandering around looking for the “Department of Law.”
I’m sure White House staffers would’ve had fun with that one.
“Ah, yes, Madame Vice President. It’s down the hall, next the Death Panel room.”
"We believe that the best of America is not all in Washington, D.C. ... We believe that the best of America is in these small towns that we get to visit, and in these wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America, being here with all of you hard working very patriotic, um, very, um, pro-America areas of this great nation," Palin told a crowd at a fundraiser.
There you go. If your from the city, your not a real American and apparently can’t be patriotic. Sorry, George Washington. Sorry, Thomas Jefferson. Sorry, Abe Lincoln. You weren’t in the real America, you were in Washington, D.C. and thus, probably weren’t real Americans.
No doubt, she will run for the presidency in 2012. Her election, though possible but unlikely, would be a disaster, should it occur. However, it would certainly be a boon to the world of comedy. As legendary humorist Will Rogers noted:
“It’s easy being a humorist when you’ve got the whole government working for you.”
That is a statement that I can’t refudiate.
Posted by dmargarita at 2:08 PM
July 12, 2010
Sour Gripes
I was going to devote this space today to the spectacle of the LeBron James/ESPN show known as “The Decision.” Mind you, I didn’t see the show, but so much has been written and said about the show that I don’t need to have seen to be properly educated about it. That said, I’ve decided not to write about it.
That may be the first time that I’ve spent an entire paragraph writing about what I’m not going to write about.
Instead, I’ve decided to write about some gripes about some recent service (or lack thereof) I’ve recently received (or not) at certain restaurants.
Hey, why pay a therapist to listen to my gripes, when I can just publish them in the newspaper?
I’ve never worked as a waiter (or waitress, for that matter) but in my many years in and around show business, I’ve become friends or acquaintances with many men and women in the service industry. Thus, I have complete sympathy (empathy?) for what is a very physically demanding job. Serving multiple customers, all of whom want their stuff, when they want it, is surely no easy task.
Still, it was sitting in a restaurant for 30 minutes last night without someone coming to my table that drove me over the edge, not to mention driving me next door where I had a nice meal at an Italian restaurant. I was aware of the bad reputation for horrible service that this restaurant is known for, because I had read the scathing reviews that several people wrote on the Internet, before I ever went there. You may ask why would I go there, knowing it was bad, but I was performing there, so being there was necessary. Besides, I think it’s only fair to make your own judgment about something based on your own personal experience and not someone else’s. Hey, somebody can have a bad experience, but it doesn’t mean that I will as well; and anybody can have a bad day at work. We all have them, but when a place consistently has bad service and a bad reputation, wouldn’t it be prudent for them oh, say improve the service and thus their reputation? They lost money because I ate next door. Surely, they’re also losing a lot more money because who wants to go back to a place where they’ve had a miserable experience (well, maybe masochists).
There is a local restaurant where I’ve continued to experience similar problems with the service each time I’ve eaten there. Yes, it’s a fair question to ask why’d I return to a place where I have had repeatedly bad experiences. As the saying goes, only a fool continues to do the same thing over and over and expects to get a different result (or something like that). Well, I’m a masochist. No, actually the food is pretty good (when you finally get it) and I like to give people and places second and third….and fourteenth and fifteenth chances.
One annoying bit is when servers assume the extra change from a check. Let me explain (and you may want to stand clear as I am about to attempt math). Let’s say the bill comes to $14.72 and I give the server $20. I would expect to get (here goes) $5.28 back, no? Yet, an increasing amount of times I seem to just get back the $5. Servers, please don’t assume the extra 28 cents as part of your tip. I’m a good tipper (too good, according to one former girlfriend), so please let me make the determination of what I’ll tip you when I get my change back.
Oh, we the paying customers are not without our annoying habits either. Yes, I’m especially talking about the Nextel walkie-talkie phone users.
CRACKLE: “HI, Frank. I just sat down at the bar.”
BEEP and CRACKLE: Hey, did Charlie show up yet?”
It’s bad enough to have to listen to your end of the conversation as if I was listening Bob Newhart’s least funny routine, but now I have to listen to your friend’s end of the conversation too?
I’m having reservations (pardon the bad pun) about publishing this, hoping that servers who read this aren’t going to start putting things in my food that don’t belong there, but I’ll take my chances that they take it as constructive criticism.
Sorry, but I just felt the need to put in my one-cent worth (it was two cents, but like everyone else, I’ve had to make cutbacks).
Posted by dmargarita at 3:54 PM