House of Love

2004-08-06T18:05:00.000-04:00

Phil RIP Rick James. We went to see Rick James and Teena Marie at Constitution Hall a couple of months ago. His on stage charisma was pretty amazing. They did a 15 minute + version of Fire and Desire may have been my favorite live song. He had become a cult figure lately because of the Chappelle Show, and he deserves more then becoming a catch phrase for loudmouth white dorks. Don't watch your TiVo'ed Chapelle Show, go listen to Give it To Me Baby.

2004-07-29T17:41:00.000-04:00

Kate Your observation about the North Carolina primaries alone, Phil, has made you more relevant than 90% of what's out there.

The convention has highlighted a dangerous political force - a pundit with a deadline and nothing to say. This, of course, has probably been made worse by blogs, 24-hour news channels, and the Fox News pundit-o-rama. But some of the attacks I've seen in the last week have been truly shameful.

Take, for example, Robert Novak reporting on Crossfire that Teresa Heinz Kerry's pumpkin spice cookie recipe "wasn't as good as Laura Bush's oatmeal chocolate chunk cookie recipe" and that Ms. Kerry, "when confronted with this assessment, blamed the failure on her staffer." Perhaps Mr. Novak's administration sources are drying up since they got in all that trouble for outing a CIA operative. Mickey Kaus from Slate was close behind in his breathless revelation that Mr. Kerry had named Eddie Yost as his favorite Red Sock, when it turns out Eddie Yost had never played for the Red Sox at all. Actually, Mr. Kaus, Yost was a coach. Don't you feel silly now?

No, he doesn't feel silly; he got three blog paragraphs out of the perceived misstatement. As Elaine from Seinfeld once said, just when I thought we couldn't get any shallower we manage to drain a little more out of the pool. In fact, nothing seems too trivial to mention. Call it the Maureen Dowd school of punditry - when you don't have anything valuable to say, repeat the useless observation that Gore doesn't seem like an alpha male. Oh, and did you get the meme that he's been told to wear earth tones?

All these absurd factoids - supposedly in an effort to reveal something deeply meaningful about the candidate - have the vague feel of Republican talking points, despite the fact that some liberal pundits have repeated them. But unlike some wacky conspiracy theorists who posit that an entity as massive and amorphous as "the media" has some sort of specific, concerted political agenda, I don't think that's what's happening here.

These factoids sound like Republican talking points simply because Republicans are much better than Democrats at focusing their opposition messaging on matters that seem, well, kind of trivial. They learned during the Clinton years that tarring a candidate as a "tax-and-spend-liberal" is far less effective than tarring him as a phony or a liar. (Why so effective? Because these are things you can't disprove. If you're accused of being a tax-and-spend liberal, just push harder for welfare reform - but there's no way to convince someone you're not a serial exaggerator.) And it's easier to tar someone with those labels by emphasizing highly memorable, seemingly inconsequential, non-political examples. And if you repeat it often enough, eventually the mainstream media and even some of your liberal counterparts will be so effectively taken in by the newfound conventional wisdom, and so desperate for something to say, they'll do their work for you.

I feel I'm entitled to take the high road on the issue of triviality. I mean, have you read the House of Love? No, really read it? 100% weighty issue gold, 100% not at all desperate for something to say. Don't let anyone tell you that blogging isn't way easier than it looks.

2004-07-28T02:22:00.000-04:00

Phil Congressional primaries have been happening recently, and I ran across this tidbit from the Wall Street Journal

"Up in North Carolina, a black Republican placed first in a GOP Congressional primary for a vacant U.S. House seat. Vernon Robinson, a city councilman in Winston-Salem, ran an unapologetically conservative campaign using the slogan: "Jesse Helms is back! And this time he's black." "

Man that is bizzaro and great in so many ways. I certainly don't think it is strange for African Americans to be conservative, but you have to be pretty nuts to be a black guy embracing Jesse Helms as your political role model. Plus can you imagine how crazy this must drive Jesse? He is in his 90's and has to be half senile at this point, there is probably little left up there but the racism. I bet he is just spouting off with all the old-school 1930's racial slurs. "That pickaninny is saying what?" "What did that jigaboo call himself."

2004-07-26T15:09:00.000-04:00

Kate Phil, all your extended Hitchens quote proves is that back in the day Reagan was in office he was a leftist, and that he has a long, grudge-filled memory. These things we already know. You go on to say that just because he's "for the war in Iraq" today doesn't mean he's not on the left anymore. I would agree with you, of course, if he ever wrote about anything other than the war in Iraq. I haven't seen an article from him that wasn't war-related or the desecration of a recently-deceased public figure in at least a year, and likely more.

In other words, when the only thesis you ever forward is how right the neo-conservatives are on the only subject you ever write about, what do I care if you think school vouchers have distracted from more important discussions on education reform? Frankly, right now Hitch could believe that we should colonize the moon and set up a Soviet academic labor camp there for all I know. He certainly never talks about it.

I know it's rhetorically important for both conservatives and Hitchens himself to pretend he's still on the left. But the subjects he chooses to about write suggest otherwise.

And lay off my people, would you? Just because we hate people who've immigrated more recently than we have and like us some hair product doesn't mean our heart's not in the right place.

2004-07-25T18:45:00.000-04:00

Phil So I went down to Atlantic City to watch some boxing this weekend. This was my first experience with big time prize fighting and I enjoyed it a lot. However next time I go to a fight I am going to make sure it is two black guys fighting, or two Mexicans, or a Mexican and Black Guy, or a Puerto Rican v. a Thai. No more Gotti fights though.

The discos of Jersey were empty last night as every scumbag Jersey guido dirtbag was in Boardwalk Hall. The air was saturated with the smell of gel. They announced the celebrities at ringside and the guy who plays Paulie Walnuts on the Sopranos got a bigger ovation then Willie Mays. Dorin is Romainian and we had a small but vocal group of Romanian fans cheering and waving flags. This was met with guys standing up and yelling "sit down you fucking faggots", "fuck you, you fucking fags" or "Fuck you, sit down, faggots." The epithets were telling if you consider the fact that your average Gotti fan is dressed exactly like your average visitor to Chaos the disco at the corner of my street.

2004-07-23T02:23:00.000-04:00

Phil This is Hitchens on Ronald Reagan days after his death

"There was more to Ronald Reagan than that. Reagan announced that apartheid South Africa had "stood beside us in every war we've ever fought," when the South African leadership had been on the other side in the most recent world war. Reagan allowed Alexander Haig to greenlight the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, fired him when that went too far and led to mayhem in Beirut, then ran away from Lebanon altogether when the Marine barracks were bombed, and then unbelievably accused Tip O'Neill and the Democrats of "scuttling." Reagan sold heavy weapons to the Iranian mullahs and lied about it, saying that all the weapons he hadn't sold them (and hadn't traded for hostages in any case) would, all the same, have fit on a small truck. Reagan then diverted the profits of this criminal trade to an illegal war in Nicaragua and lied unceasingly about that, too. Reagan then modestly let his underlings maintain that he was too dense to understand the connection between the two impeachable crimes. He then switched without any apparent strain to a policy of backing Saddam Hussein against Iran. (If Margaret Thatcher's intelligence services had not bugged Oliver North in London and become infuriated because all European nations were boycotting Iran at Reagan's request, we might still not know about this.)"

"One could go on. I only saw him once up close, which happened to be when he got a question he didn't like. Was it true that his staff in the 1980 debates had stolen President Carter's briefing book? (They had.) The famously genial grin turned into a rictus of senile fury: I was looking at a cruel and stupid lizard. His reply was that maybe his staff had, and maybe they hadn't, but what about the leak of the Pentagon Papers? Thus, a secret theft of presidential documents was equated with the public disclosure of needful information. This was a man never short of a cheap jibe or the sort of falsehood that would, however laughable, buy him some time. "

Those aren't the words of a right winger. His Clinton book was a critique of Clinton's presidency from the left not the right. Just because he is for the war in Iraq doesn't mean he has changed his philosophy.

2004-07-22T16:39:00.000-04:00

Kate While it's true that white people are as fickle as Britney Spears before her morning cigarette, I wouldn't call Linda Ronstadt washed up just yet. Who could forget her duet with one of the Nevilles? Didn't she sing that song for that cartoon mouse? The less popular cartoon mouse? It may have been 15 years ago now but to me it's still like yesterday.

As for Hitch, yeah, he's on the "far left" the way David Horowitz is, the way David Brock still goes to CPAC conventions. At this point his leftist credentials are nothing more to him than a rhetorical device. I prefer my faux-leftist positioning from Democratic candidates or their speechwriters, thanks very much.

2004-07-21T18:55:00.000-04:00

Phil So Linda Rondstadt gets booed off stage in Vegas for big upping Mike Moore. Apparently she got her stuff tossed out of her suite, and is getting major cancelations from her L.A. Amphitheater gig.

First Linda Rondstadt is still touring? I know black folks are loyal to washed up acts (I am telling you Immature could pack Constitution Hall), but white people usually trash heap people like Rondstadt. I suppose she is too lite rock for Branson, so maybe she is trying to get her name in the news and get a Lorretta Lynn style hipster second act. What is Zach De La Rocha doing lately? Hey Fugazi just broke up, maybe Ian McKye can produce her next disc.

2004-07-15T16:00:00.000-04:00

Phil I really thought the article was more about bemoaning the new found leftist affinity for the CIA, then about making any "conservative claim." Hitchens isn't a conservative, he is far left. I got the sense that he was just really pissed off that his fellow travelers are now embracing the CIA as ideological bedmates.

This article didn't do much for me though, I prefer the the drunken grave desecrating Hitchens. Sure he shit all over Reagan, but that was a given. Where is his evisceration of Ray Charles? Paul Mooney took some shots at Brando, where is Hitch? I want a long piece on how overrated Weezy Jefferson was, how she was a B-Team Florida Evens how that show was carried by Marla Gibbs , maybe some long held Hollywood rumors about her undercutting Shirley Hemphills promising career.

2004-07-15T14:38:00.000-04:00

Kate I'm glad we've decided to return to the internet House of Love. There's nothing sadder than seeing Phil wandering about the apartment with a Korean nail salon joke and no one to tell it to.

From now on, we will both try to remember there is a real, physical purpose to the blog - that is, as a repository for all of the discussions that are not meant to be had in person. Sometimes, kids, when you live together, it takes some adjusting; now we know that all the jokes, all the point-counterpoint, all the backbiting and recrimination don't need to be hashed out when one comes home from work at night, if in fact one comes home from work at night. Sometimes they can be hashed out in a more appropriate forum. Sometimes that forum should be public.

So I'll get the ball rolling. Check out the article in Slate where Christopher Hitchens actually continues to make the long-held conservative claim that the CIA undersold evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction to the administration. That's a pretty spectacular claim given that there actually weren't any WMDs. Is it possible to undersell nothing? Is this some sort of existential argument? I think my mind has officially been blown, Mr. Hitchens.

2004-07-15T03:03:00.000-04:00

Phil Okay I am fully aware that if we are ever going to attempt to keep an audience for this thing, we really can't allow 4 months to pass between posts. With that out of the way. These beheadings have been really saddening, I especially don't like the precedent set by the Philippines by pulling their soldiers out, even though I can understand their rational. I do think the insurgents made a big mistake when they targeted the South Koreans though. The Koreans are a people with some stick-to-itiveness, you go into any inner city in America and you will see one family of Koreans surrounded by 10,000 Black folks that hate their guts. The father will get shot, the uncle is right at the counter the next day selling loosies and lottery tickets. The terrorists don't know what they have done, in 9 months Mosul is going to be all nail salons and liquor stores.

2004-03-16T16:49:00.000-05:00

Kate Phil, I wouldn't be overly concerned about the way your jokes read on the blog. Chances are good that you'll repeat the jokes to our readers in person, and probably more than once.

I apologize, again, to our "fans" (who have now actually turned quite bitter, and on occasion physically violent) for my prolonged absence. Work has turned ugly and promises not to ease up until the summer. So I'm afraid the House of Love, for the moment, will be mostly a physical address. And, of course, in my heart. Maybe my soul, too, hard to say. But definitely a.) an address, and b.) in my heart. Both of those places.

2004-03-09T03:51:00.000-05:00

Phil: I had a discussion with Kate about the order in which I should place my back to back Jewish handiness jokes. I wanted the Roman joke to be read second, as I think it is funnier, but it all depends on the way people read blogs. If you read it chronologically then you get the funnier joke second, if you read it straight down then you are getting the jokes out of order. In fact if you are reading the blog straight down, you are now reading my Meta comments on the jokes before you even read the jokes.

I get really anal about comedy writing, and what has sparked this whole post is the death of Spaulding Gray who was my stock monologist. If I needed to make a joke about a monologist I would use Gray, but now his body was found in a river, victim of a tragic suicide, it isn't as funny. So now when a reference to a monologist is called for, I guess I have to use Eric Bogosian.

2004-03-08T15:54:00.001-05:00

Phil Our new apartment is coming together very nicely. Kate has been a true superstar as she has mounted and assembled all of our Ikea booty. I am not very handy, Jews as a group normally aren't. We usually just get Romans to nail things up for us.

2004-03-08T15:54:00.000-05:00

2004-03-02T17:49:00.000-05:00

Kate Time has been cruel to both me and the blog, it's true. For reasons unknown, although possibly related to the moving or January-induced laziness or both, I've been insanely busy this month. But March is a new time for me, and in many ways, a new blog.

The new slate starts with my admittedly last-minute trip to Costa Rica, which I seem to get an overwhelming urge to do every year. Clean slate kinda thing. Maybe the trip will give me all sorts of blog-worthy and Phil-worthy insight into politics, art, pop culture, and philosophy. It's unlikely, but so was a movie called "The Passion of Christ" breaking box office records, so who knows.

2004-02-20T19:20:00.000-05:00

Phil I know that February has been an intolarably slow blogging month, but I am promising at least a one sided pickup. We have moved into our new digs, and the House of Love is no longer just a cyber address. I am back to being a shiftless unemployed bum, after briefly flirting with the rarified air of Turkish educational administration. We have the TiVo set up here in The Cario and I have been watching alot of old boxing on ESPN classics. I like classic boxing, especially stuff from the 1930's it is the only time you can root for Jews in sports.

2004-02-04T15:27:00.000-05:00

Phil So the third round of primaries are over and things have changed a ton in a month. In 2003 the stories you were reading dealt with a battle within the Democratic party between the Clinton wing (with their proxy Wesley Clark) and the more liberal Gore wing and his little buddy Howard Dean. After the primaries it is clear that the winner is the Michael Dukakis wing. I can just see the son of Greek immigrants sitting back in his Florida Atlanic University Poli-Sci adjunct office, pulling the strings for the Democratic party. He hasn’t forgotten ’88, the Bushes will pay!

2004-02-02T16:53:00.000-05:00

Phil We watched the Super Bowl yesterday in our new palacial digs at the Cario. Suprisingly fun football game, especially after the sluggish first quarter. I really didn't understand the MTV produced "Tribute to Sexually Violence." First we had dancers dressed up as famous literary rapist Alex fom Clockwork Orange. Then Justin Timberlake disrobing Janet Jackson and showing her robot nipples to the world. Was the whole thing a veiled shoutout to jailed Panther Rae Carruth?

2004-01-31T19:51:00.000-05:00

Kate Buttercup, I really wish you would refrain from your hurtful posts. I am trying to make my peace with the possibility of John Kerry being the Democratic nominee. Leave me to my misery.

I'm worried that as the election approaches, the difficult balancing act that is our relationship is teetering towards collapse. Just recently, I was forced to tell you to stop touching me when you were talking about Bush. What's going to happen if he gets re-elected and the media forces me to follow through on my promise to move to France? Est-ce que tu voyagais au France a reunir avec moi?

By the way, you misspelled foosball. I take my shots where I can get them.

2004-01-29T00:11:00.000-05:00

Phil Dean's campaign manager got fired/resigned today, and they announced they were out of money. Man alive where did all the Venture Capital go? They were buying fooseball tables and having staff massages while they were bleeding money with no way to get cash positive. All those folks with Orange hats must feel like Pets.com stockholders. Dean proves yet again that the only thing positive ever to come out of the internet is the linking of sexual fetishists to sexual fetishist communities. And this blog

2004-01-23T16:31:00.000-05:00

Kate Ahh, the blog. In the face of everything gone awry in this crazy mixed-up world, the bluebird his-and-her blog - and, to a lesser extent, Phil - remains a constant.

As you may have guessed, I've been a little down since the Iowa caucus. People around me may know me as a Dean supporter. Not one of those messianic Dean types, but a supporter nonetheless. And this past week has been hard to watch.

Why do the Democrats have to eat their own? Can they not look at a candidate, decide if he or she is representative of their views and decide whether or not to support them? Do they have to be such ridiculous slaves to this near-constant drumbeat of electability! electability! The irony of that, of course, is the more they want their candidate to be electable, the less likely they are to actually be elected.

To wit, Joe Lieberman on why Democrats should vote for him, on why he's the most electable candidate:

"They [Republicans] can't say I'm weak on defense. Obviously, I'm not," Lieberman said. "They can't say I'm a tax and spender because I'm a tax cutter and a budget balancer. They can't say I'm weak on values because I'm clearly strong on values, including faith-based. And they can't say I'm a flip-flopper, which Republicans love to say about Democrats."

Wow, Joe, that's a fantastic list of things people can't say about you; but what can they say about you, exactly? You bring nothing to the table except that you aren't as much of a Republican as (and, as the Daily Show says, a little more Jewish than) Bush, which makes you seem more like a failure than anything else. To differing degrees, that's true of most of the Democrats.

There's different ways of thinking about this race than a near-obsession over the 500 swing voters in Florida. There's differing degrees of support for a candidate; don't take that 45% number for granted. I wish the Democrats would look for a candidate with broader appeal than "there's nothing wrong with this guy." That candidate may not be Dean, but it's certainly not Kerry. In other words, whither our Democratic Goldwater?

Ehh, enough. Enough of this race and the stupid mistakes that we're forever bound to repeat.

2004-01-22T01:59:00.000-05:00

Phil I apologize about the paucity of blogging this week. I haven't been sleeping well, I keep dreaming that Howard Dean is coming to kill me, YEAAAAAAARGGGGGHHHHH.

Caught a couple of minutes of the Dave Navarro and Carmen Electra reality show on MTV. Out of all the people Prince fucked in the 1980's why is Carmen Electra the sole survivor? Where is Shelia E? Diamond? Vanity? Appalonia? Pearl? Morris Day? I mean Electra isn't even talented, Sheila E could play the shit out of some drums

2004-01-16T18:03:00.000-05:00

Kate Buttercup, you're coming dangerously close to saying that Bush got rid of O'Neill because he's gay. Which I wouldn't put past Bush, frankly, but as a joke, it's tired borscht belt humor. But hey, you're out there trying, which is more than I can say for me this past week.

It's true. I've been absent. In part because of the sadness with Phil gone - how do you do a his-and-her bluebird-style blog with only one? - but also because it's been a dull week. I still think that I can keep to my promise of being funnier if you nominate us for the blog awards, but it's just too much to expect that I come up with original material, instead of simply taking potshots at the Henny Youngman* gems that Phil throws up on the site.

*to be fair, I was writing this post when Phil called me, so the Henny Youngman reference is really his. I made him do that thing that I mock him mercilessly for - you know, going through the list of possible borscht belt comedians when forming the riff - but, rather than being outright plagiarism, I chose from the list the comedian I thought was the most amusing. My apologies to Shecky Green and Buddy Hackett. In the interest of full disclosure, I was fully warned that there would be accusations of anti-semitism for the reference.

2004-01-15T16:11:00.000-05:00

Phil So the big story this week is Paul O'Neill's comments in a new book. I don't have much to say on that, but anyone else think that Bush may have gotten rid of him just because of his lisp? I keep hearing him on the radio and he sounds like a MC at a Proviencetown Drag Talent Show. "Leth hear it for Mith Marina. She's a Superstah."

2004-01-12T17:58:00.000-05:00

Phil Been out of the loop for a while as I am visiting my parents in California. Played a couple of days at the Monterey Bridge Tournament. Oddest thing there is the presence of special "Seniors" event open for people over 55. My guestimate is that there may have been 3 dozen people at the entire tournament under 55. It was an event for everyone but me and a couple of other folks.

2004-01-07T18:38:00.000-05:00

Kate Honey, I appreciate the shout out to me as being young. But truth be told, I'm the one who fell asleep before the charades could happen.

Your Jagged Edge riff was even more amusing the second time around, with the decision to compare the band members to Ronnie DeVoe instead of Ralph Tresvant. I'm also glad to see that you've stepped up your humor content since the Howard Dean reference. There's nothing funnier than implying that Howard Dean wants to run everything by the U.N.; it's as amusing as implying that George Bush doesn't want to run anything by anyone at all! Aren't Jay-Leno-style political stereotypes hilarious? Meanwhile, I personally think we have blog readers that have come to expect a more sophisticated level of political humor than something on par with your average Free Republic post, and a step down from the Capitol Steps.

Speaking of stepping it up a notch, the 2003 blog awards have begun. And at the risk of seeming self-promoting, I'd like to pitch to our readers a new deal: we'll be funnier if you nominate us for best new blog of 2003! (Hint: on the nomination form, emphasize our potential.)

Don't fall into the trap of thinking this is like our promises to post more often, to spell things correctly, to fact-check our posts or to stop asking if you've read the blog. This time it's different, baby, I swear.

2004-01-05T03:35:00.000-05:00

Phil I am officially old as dirt. Me and lovely young Kate spent New Year's Eve eating lasagna at Swan Street, and we attempted to play Charades but couldn't really get it together. Meanwhile I get a pair of calls from friends, one of my pals made out with a 63 year old woman, and another called from an ally somewhere near Constitution ave. Plus Brittany Spears got so wasted she ended up getting married in a Vegas chapel with her limo driver walking her down the aisle. Meanwhile I was watching Jagged Edge on Dick Clark.

And boy do Jagged Edge suck, they are like New Edition with no Bobby Browns, Micheals Bivinses, Ralph Tresvantses, Johnny Gills or Rickey Bells just four Ronnie DeVoes. And why the hell did Oats shave his mustache? At least Hall had the decency to keep the same feathered hair he has had since 1982, if you are going to be a nostalgia act, look like a nostalgia act. No one wants a short haired C.C. Deville.

2004-01-02T17:22:00.000-05:00

Kate I've been slow to return to the blog, because of both the holiday and the fact that I'm intimidated by the prognostication prowess in Phil's post.

For example - I would, in fact, briefly awaken to shake my fist at the TV screen to protest Lord of the Rings, which has the juggernaut feel of Titanic circa 1997. Let me promise you that awarding the Best Picture title to the overblown, overlong, special effects-heavy weeping dwarves film will generate the same ugly morning-after not-so-fresh feeling that Titanic did. The same question will be asked: "wait a minute - was that really the best picture of 2003? Really?" The same embarrassment will be felt from the minute Peter Jackson delivers part of his acceptance speech in elfin, and will only continue when two of the hobbits are caught making out backstage.

Along those lines, a lot has been made about how this movie was really a guy's movie, and maybe that is why I didn't like it that much, but what about all the gay hobbits, then? Is the target demographic for this film the bizarre nexus of ren-faire geeks and metrosexuals? Or, as the Onion promised, have gaywads and dorkwads finally signed the historic wad pact?

It's unclear. But I do want to make clear that it's not that there's anything wrong with gay hobbits. Some of my best friends are gay hobbits.

2003-12-31T15:10:00.000-05:00

Phil The New Year is upon us and as we approach the cusp of 2004 I am going to flex my prognostication muscles and deliver some New Year predictions

-Impressed by the success of his Chrysler PPV Lingerie Football team, Dan Snyder picks Lawrence Taylor to be the new coach of the Redskins. After going 1-5, L.T. activates himself to chase Bruce Smiths sack record, Bruce unretires as well, Redskins defense gives up 275 rushing yards a game.

-Return of the King wins Best Picture Oscar. Kate briefly awakes from Swan St. Couch to angrily shake her fist. Then falls back asleep.

-Dennis Miller runs against Barbara Boxer for the Senate seat in California. Campaign consists entirely of Phillip Roth references. Miller takes huge lead in polls. CAA hires Matalin and Carville to run new campaign wing of their offices. CA Assembly replaces Hollywood Squares as final stop on failed fame train . California AG race pits Ally Sheedy against Anthony Micheal Hall in Battle of the Breakfast Club.

-Howard Dean wins Democratic nomination. Makes offhand comment at Move-On Q and A session that he would be willing to run by the U.N. any bills passed by Congress before he signs them. Line met by thunderous applause by audience, but contributes to Dean losing 49 states. VP candidate Al Gore, sporting a full beard and sewage stained dress shirt then seen wandering by V.P. mansion screaming at Cheney to “Get out of my House.” Briefly detained by Capitol police.

-Eaten up by Jealousy at sister Paris fame, Nicky Hilton ends up giving fellating Carson Daily on stage at MTV Video Awards. Embarrassment over the incident ends up torpedoing Daily’s House candidacy.

-Retro music trend continues with huge Prog Rock revival. Every new band out of Williamsburg now sports mountain man beard and plays endless Moog solos. Yes comback tour sells out Black Cat.

-Provigil makes Kate too active to put up with my lazy ass. Dumps me, I am forced to date exclusively Heroin Addicts and Girls in Comas

2003-12-29T11:01:00.000-05:00

Rama [ed. - many thanks to our guest post, Phil's uncle Rama. We've been slow in publishing his piece for no other reason than our laziness, and our love.]

Okay, I'm gonna admit it here - right here - on "House of Love" - I've been
suckered again.

I live in Vermont, and every year when Winter rolls around and the
temperature hasn't dropped to sub human levels yet I grasp my annual, futile
straw of hope: This year will be the year it stays above 40 degrees (F that
is). As I sit here typing this my fun little Weather Underground link
thingie is telling me its currently 8 degrees outside, and I can see the
several feet of snow I had to move around the other day just to get in and
out of the house. Shit!

Suckered again - big time. How was I supposed to know winter would be like
this in Vermont? Anyway all is not lost. Along with the cold and snow comes
lots of quality time with my computer and email. Its that email I'm really
interested in.

In the last week I've gotten some 155 emails, and 25 of those will provide
me with my means to leave the rural poverty shrouding my life and keeping me
a slave to the man. Seems there are all sorts of people in Africa that have
access to abandoned bank accounts with tens and even hundreds of millions of
dollars in 'em. All I have to do is send my bank account numbers and they'll
transfer their money out of Africa through my account and give me 10 or 20
percent! I'm gonna make an email list so I can respond to all of them -
don't want to miss an opportunity you know?

Another project I've set my mind on this long, cold, dreary winter is
personal enhancement. You see I've also got emails advertising products to
enhance my breast and penis size. Think about it - I'll be sitting in front
of my computer waiting for millions of dollars to flow into my life while I
get to watch my body parts expand! This is gonna be great.

Oh yeah - there is one other thing I've got my eye on (actually I've got two
eyes but one has to be on the door as you'll understand very shortly). I
recently received an email from a lovely young lady that starts with "Hey...
my name is MARY JANE .. I'm only emailin' ya to see if you wanted to see my
pics, or possibly talk to me on webcam.... only check me out if you like
blondes who are 5'9.. " If I can keep the wife away from my office I'm gonna
have lots of discussions with this girl.

If I have time I'm planning on trying to interpret those German, Chinese and
other foreign language emails, but I don't know if I'll get around to that.
I do know, however, I'm not gonna be suckered by winter anymore.

Everyone have a great winter,
RamaBahama from Vermont

2003-12-23T14:38:00.000-05:00

Kate I'm sure that's what Khaddafi said to Berlusconi. What good is a public relations ploy without the accompanying public relations? The statement itself is a poorly worded joke, too - I'm guessing we won't know what really makes him tick until somebody unseals the records from the Presidential Library in Tripoli. (Saturday, March 3- I don't know how I got myself into this mess, but the problem with chairing the U.N. Human Rights Committee is that I have to pretend I'm not actually abusing human rights! What a chore. Sometimes I think being a world leader is just like being in high school again.)

And that the right has suddenly become Khaddafi's best friend now that he's made Bush look good is more than a little icky. Since when did the U.S. trust his word on anything? We drop allies and make new ones like we're in a Sweet Valley High book. Being the leader of the U.S. really must be just like being in high school.

Good luck with your new money-making scheme, but I'm not sure I appreciate the imagery associated with the fact that your "roomate used to hit that." But that may be because I'm unhip. By the way, who is DJ Kay Slay?

2003-12-23T02:17:00.000-05:00

Phil Jack White of the White Stripes was arrested yesterday for punching the lead singer of the Von Bondies in the face. I think I have figured out my newest money making scheme. I can be the Mix Tape DJ for the battle songs of Hipster Garage Bands. The lead singer of the Shins drops a dis track on the bassest of The Star Spangles, I can release it. Allisyn Levy has a band, she has got to answer the Postal Service album, my roomate used to hit that, I have an in! Have you seen the rims on DJ Kay Slay's Explorer?

2003-12-23T00:15:00.000-05:00

Phil As far as Qadaffi's motivations check this statement he made to Silvio Berlusconi

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/09/04/wun04.xml

Seems pretty clear to me

2003-12-22T12:25:00.000-05:00

Kate It is as reasonable to assume that what prompted Khaddafi was his fear of the U.S. sweeping across North Africa as it is to assume that he's telling us the truth on his weapons programs.

Oh wait, or is it more likely to assume that a.) Khadaffi has been trying to get out from under the burden of U.S. and U.N. sanctions for years, desperately trying to curry international favor - witness his agreement to pay reparations for the Lockerbie and Discotheque bombings, and b.) pretending he even has WMD to begin with makes him look like a more powerful leader than he actually is while giving Blair and Bush an incentive to lift sanctions?

In short, the clear conclusion is that sanctions and international pressure work, given enough time and a level-headed approach to diplomacy. I was never a big fan of Reagan, but the Libya example in the wake of Lockerbie makes him look positively Solomonic. He launched a few cruise missiles, hit the presidential compound, shut Khaddafi up (sent him to the c-team axis of evil bench) and called it a day. If Shrub had been President American troops would still be occupying Libya to prop up our puppet Shah.

By the way, the idea that Libya was under any threat of invasion at all undermines the way the Iraq war was sold to the American people, i.e., as a direct response to a particular threat. All of the crowing about how Khaddafi caved - kinda makes it look like we were planning on continuing to stage two of our conquest of the Muslim world. Which seems to be true, depending on Bush's mood, the alignment of the planets, and whether or not it looks like we'll be able to maintain the occupation of Muslim country #1, but it's a bad look nonetheless.

2003-12-20T17:59:00.000-05:00

Phil So the big news today is that Mummar Gadaffi (Khadafi?Qudaffii? Cadhaafi? Qadafi?) has decided to renounce all of his weapons of mass destruction and open up his country for inspections. I guess that Spider Hole didn't look so comfy from the presidential palace in Tripoli. It is funny that the first international leader to blink after our invasion of Iraq was Khadafi (Kadphi? K-Diddy?). Hell I don't think anyone has even thought of Libya in a decade, I mean even 80's nostalgia was over 5 years ago. I guess when you are the supreme leader of a country with thousands of syncophants, it is hard not to get a little egocentric. "THEY GOT SADAMM, I AM NEXT!!."

When in reality not only wasn't Libya in the Axis of evil,(Iraq, Iran, North Korea) they weren't even the first off the bench (Syria, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan,France), they are sitting next to the trainer and the team media guy side by side with Cuba and Angola. It would be half way through Jeb Bush's second term before we even got to Libya. If Libya was this jumpy imagine how Iran and North Korea feel, hell they can smell the jet fuel. My guess that Qadaffi (K-Solo? Q-Tip?) will be the first of many of the members of the International Alliance of Super Villians to turn over new leaf

2003-12-18T16:54:00.000-05:00

Kate Plus, I don't even watch the West Wing! You watch the West Wing! I also never worked for Dean! You worked for Dean! Crate and Barrel liberal, heal thyself.

2003-12-18T10:48:00.000-05:00

Kate Whoa, what's with all this hand-wringing over the left? Last time I looked, the people that you're gloating over have about zero control in this country. Aren't there better things to do with your time? I mean, shouldn't you guys be off making bad policy somewhere?

But no such luck. James Taranto, opinion editor of the Wall Street Journal, thinks that the people who opposed the war should "choke to death on their own angry bile." This is from your personal favorite, David Frum of the National Review: "...while the President's opponents have made much sport of the idea that God called George [W.] Bush to the presidency, it's becoming increasingly difficult to doubt that God wants President Bush re-elected ..." Now I know why you voted for him.

The trouble with all this useless power is that there's no one else to blame for the colossal failures. Here's a tip: less time on the vitriol, more time on the post-war planning.

(By the way, how many drafts of "Crate and Barrel liberals" did you go through while watching episodes of the West Wing on TiVo? "Pottery Barn liberals? No, it doesn't flow. Restoration Hardware liberals? Too obscure. Williams and Sonoma liberals? That's just off-topic..." I can't bear to think of all the patented Sorkin banter you must have missed!)

2003-12-17T17:36:00.000-05:00

Phil So I was watching some West Wings the other day (thanks to my new best friend TiVo) and started to notice alot of similarities between my old boss Howard Dean and Jed Bartlett. All the Crate and Barrel liberals who have been driving around with the “Martin Sheen is my President” bumper stickers, have now found their own straight shooting New England Governor to get behind. All of those webloggers and code writers making “personal connections” all cast themselves as Josh or Sam or C.J., young upstanding kids fighting the good fight. Of course real life politics don’t have clever crackheads writing the snappy dialogue and plot twists, and hopefully there won’t be a Hollywood happy ending for the Dean folks.

2003-12-16T09:59:00.000-05:00

Kate The Judge Judy line was funnier. And I thought your Scandinavia beef was with the Danes...

Is international law it now solely to be trotted out as an excuse to invade another country, then dismissed at our whim? If we're going to bother with a legal system at all, that system is owed the same respect given the criminal justice system in the United States - the appearance of impartiality, a change of venue and a fair trial.

2003-12-15T15:55:00.000-05:00

Phil I thought the Karl Marx line was funny. I would guess that the chance of Sadam Hussain being tried in the Hague would be about the same chance that he will be tried by Judge Judy. He is going to be tried and excuted by the people of Iraq, not some Swedish judge

2003-12-15T11:00:00.000-05:00

Kate Hmm, you're stepping things up, I see:

views the capture of histories (sic) greatest monsters as a bad thing

Maybe some people view it as a "bad thing", but I doubt the majority of the left views it as a bad thing. It's obviously a good thing - now he can be prosecuted for his crimes in an international court by a body that you probably consider irrelevant.

What I do consider unfortunate is that his capture neither makes the U.S. any safer nor brings Iraq any closer to democracy. (Would that we had captured the man responsible for 9/11 - which we probably won't be able to do thanks to the diversion of resources to Iraq.) Are these even the goals of the administration any more, or is it now just the most speedy withdrawal possible, and another fake declaration of victory?

Phil, you're much funnier when you're not talking about politics. But I guess that's true of everybody.

2003-12-15T03:31:00.000-05:00

Phil Hey they captured Karl Marx in Iraq, it is about time they got that prick. If you take a look at the Dean blogs right now they are crying in their lattes. I think it must be odd to be on the side of the fence, that views the capture of one of histories greatest monsters as a bad thing.

2003-12-10T11:11:00.000-05:00

Kate You know, some day right-thinking people will get together and force the humorless Colin Quinn and his offensive Comedy Central show, Tough Crowd, off the air.

Whew! That last one was too much fun, Phil's return to posting or no. Buttercup, you say you're going to be the bigger man and then you have to go and tear into Dr. Dean and his idealistic young campaign workers. They have a word for that where I'm from: player-hating.

Also, every girl learns at a early age that conservatives are objectivists. Don't tell me that there isn't a dog-eared copy of The Fountainhead sitting right next to See, I Told You So on the bookshelf of every young Republican across the country. And, when he finally falls in love with a girl, if he really learns to trust her, if she has held out long enough and wears enough clothes from Talbots, he'll take her to that bookshelf and explain just how much the Fountainhead means to him, and how all people really are selfish at heart.

Just because you were smart enough to throw the books away or return them to Jeremy doesn't mean you're not an objectivist...

2003-12-09T19:19:00.000-05:00

Phil I am going to be the bigger man and ignore Kate's childish tauntings. Although implying that I am an Objectivist is a pretty low blow. There was a minute there that Kate was trying to get a job as part of the Dean campaign internet start-up (which has the look of the Pets.com of political campaigns.) I am really glad she didn't, especially after reading this NY Times Mag article about the Dean internet folks.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/07/magazine/07DEAN.html

I am not sure there is a big difference between the mentality of these kids, and Scientologists or Heaven's Gate cultists. The whole "longing for community" vibe in the article gave me the jeebies. I hope Clay Johnson doesn't castrate himself next Novemeber.

2003-12-09T16:34:00.000-05:00

Kate When will we all learn that America would be better off surrendering our interests to the will of the United Nations?

2003-12-09T11:38:00.000-05:00

Kate [ed: this post is part of the Phil taunt watch, day 2] I've never understood why the U.S. doesn't just gradually adopt a more socialist government, like the Danes. And Cannibal Ox is crazy overrated.

2003-12-08T19:36:00.000-05:00

Kate That's it? That's all you got? I've been pouring my heart out on this blog intermittently for weeks now, and aside from Michael Jackson and Archbishop Don Magic Juan, you got nothing. I happen to personally know that the extent of your activity today was carrying some of Ben's boxes up to the apartment from his car - two trips! and both of them required going outside! - and there's still no blog love.

That's it, honey. You leave me no choice but to taunt you into posting: The French were right! And Ayn Rand is the worst philosopher ever!

2003-12-03T18:52:00.000-05:00

Phil I am really excited about Archbishop Don Magic Juan finally appearing on the funny pages. I thought when the legendary pimp and lay preacher appeared it would be to turn out April from For Better or For Worse or put Mary Worth out working the stroll, but instead it is on the Boondocks. Go read this stuff now:
Pimps Up, Hoes Down

2003-12-02T19:28:00.000-05:00

Kate Gentle readers, I want to reassure you not just of the House of Love's love for each other, but our love for you! Just because we don't post as often as we should, well, that doesn't mean we don't love you. It doesn't mean we don't care.

(Well, with Phil, truthfully, I don't know. He may not care about you. He probably likes you just fine, though, if that helps at all.)

Speaking of the boy, in much delayed response to his inappropriate and frankly, icky Jackson post - of the recent CBS special events programming cancellations, this is the one he's upset about? This is why people think that Republicans have skewed value systems.

2003-11-24T19:16:00.000-05:00

Kate I wonder if anyone else has noticed that anytime Allyson and I get together, we discuss the world's collective joyless future. Hmm.

2003-11-23T17:16:00.000-05:00

Allyson [ed: our weekly Sunday guest post slot.] You may think I've come here to talk about Michael's problems or Britney singing about a P'Zone, or maybe Iraq or the Giants... Nah. I want to talk about this: Turkey and Gravy Soda.

People! Do you realize what this means? You've all seen Willy Wonka, right? Remember the chewing gum that was a 5-course meal? How about Defending Your Life (starring a dazzling Albert Brooks), where the brainy other-dimension humans all ate sludge? We are officially in the future. Break out your silver helmets and hoverskates please. Oh and cancel Thanksgiving, that's useless now.

2003-11-22T01:10:00.001-05:00

Phil So CBS goes ahead and cancels Michael Jackson's television show just because he was arrested for child molestation. What ever happened to innocent until proven guilty? He hasn't been convicted. All he is, is an alleged child molester. And he has been an alleged child molester for quite a while now. CBS are such pussies, it is okay to air his concert, when he was just a guy who slept in a big cozy bed with small boys, and wrote a big blank check to some 11 year old. Now someone calls the cops and they pull the plug. They are like Claude Rains in Casablanca "I am shocked..shocked to find this place permits boy buggering."

Plus what is this kid whining about, Michael paid for his chemo. After all that, what is a little more toxic fluid pumping through your system?

2003-11-19T18:44:00.000-05:00

Kate Okay, Okay, America. We get you. You want to guest post. Take it easy on the emails, though, huh? You're cutting into my kbs available for generic viagra spam.

This week I enjoyed a fantastically stupid piece in Time magazine on their top "cool gigs", a list of potential cool jobs for right out of college types. Really, a virtual tsunami of stupidity. To wit: according to this piece, the residents of Harvard Hall, as well as their assorted loved ones, are the coolest people ever.

For example, young Benjamin Dinolt is one of the fashionable twenty-somethings employed in the up-and-coming field of private investigation. After all, says Time, who would suspect this fresh-faced kid of snooping? And his brother, Joel, is a "Super Mario Player," i.e. one of those crazy sexy cool video game testers. (I'm sorry, Joel, I've never met you, you took some incidental flak in this post, and I think you're actually a video game programmer. Sometimes I adjust the facts to serve the blog. I hope we can put this behind us.)

I myself have tried my hand at not one but two "cool gigs," having been bounced from the Foreign Service for psychological reasons - we won't get into the messy details here - and having pursued an ill-fated career in the entertainment industry. (Let me know when I need to start being mature, okay?) And Phil himself was the marketing brain trust at Sai Records, Intl., home of superstar hip-hop recording artist Heather B. It's a little known fact. Sometimes he can be as bashful as a field mouse.

So, um, Kasey, when are you going to take the Foreign Service Exam? Being cool doesn't just come to you by hanging around 1650 Harvard Street.

2003-11-17T17:41:00.000-05:00

Kate Wow! That guest post went very well, doesn't everyone think? Thanks, Will, for the real-time reminiscences of a lovely Sunday afternoon, as well as the clever, subtle shots at our spelling and grammar errors. It's called "interactivity," kids, and it really is what the inter-web is all about.

Any other readers who would like to guest post, email kate@houseoflove.com. First-come, first-serve!

2003-11-16T16:49:00.000-05:00

Will since Cayte and Pfil had difficulty updating the blog on a daily basis, i'm gonna guest post. there's a lack of sports here (gregg easterbrook doesn't count!), which is surprising since they watch a decent amt of sports. in my apt no less. so here's the scoop: the best player in the acc is sean may and no one is aware of it! they're watching the current season of the real world on mtv right now. it's pretty dull but for some reason pfil knows all about it. i'll let you come to yr own conclusions about that. now they're talking about how they're gonna get home (they're at my and allyson's place now). oh the phone's ringing i gotta go!

2003-11-14T18:16:00.000-05:00

Kate Well, another "opportunity" to apologize for lost time on the blog. I'm going to take this opportunity, however, to do some serious self-analysis. I'm also going to take this opportunity, just because it pleases Phil so, to do some serious Phil analysis. I'm not like the administration. When I see that mistakes have been made, I make an effort to examine the potential causes and correct them.

Why is it, then, so difficult for Phil and Kate to update the blog on a daily basis, as our beloved readers demand? I have come up with three potential causes:

1.) We're not that interesting.
It's hard to admit that we're less witty than we imagine when we replay the day's events in our heads, but it's true. Honey, I mean no offense by this. I mean, I think it's great when I go over to your apartment, watch three hours worth of TiVo, make some snide comment about the new MTV reality show "Rich Girls" while you mentally edit the riff on said show that you plan on repeating several times over the course of the next week, and then fall asleep early. But I think we both realize that others might not share our worldview. That's a sign of self-awareness, and frankly, it's a good thing.

2.) We're exceptionally lazy.
Some of this was sheer miscalculation; I think that Phil may have believed that taking his job at Kaplan full-time was the same thing as staying at home, with marginally better internet access. Some of this should have been expected, however.

3.) We're victims of a larger trend.
Of the 4.12 million blogs out there, 2.72 million have been abandoned and 1.09 million lasted one day. Of the remaining blogs, 106,000 are updated weekly and only about 50,000 are updated daily. In other words, we're doing better than over 80% of bloggers out there. So get off our backs, people.

(Of course that same survey noted the following: "...the typical blog is written by a teenage girl who uses it twice a month to update her friends and classmates on happenings in her life." So we're also able to defy these larger societal trends, when called for.)

What to make of this? Kate and Phil can be defined neither by survey nor social obligation, neither by self-analysis intended to deflect outside criticism nor repeated promises to others. We shall remain, as always, defined only by the House of Love.

Two, maybe three times a week.

2003-11-10T12:14:00.000-05:00

Kate Buttercup, since you apparently don't follow Saturday Night Live the way I do (Chris Kattan has been gone for moons), the somewhat less offensive Andy Roddick hosted SNL this weekend. Al Sharpton won't host until December. But maybe you can find something funny in the way Andy and Mandy - isn't that just precious? - probably hate competing reality tv stars and post-teen hearthrobs/supercouple Nick and Jessica. Something that doesn't involve rape, preferably.

In order to avoid the television this weekend, we both enjoyed Intolerable Cruelty, and Phil enjoyed the groundbreaking new Laura Ingraham tome Shut Up and Sing!: How Elites from Hollywood, Politics and the UN are Subverting America. I wonder why she didn't name it Shut Up and Legislate! or Shut Up and Peacekeep!, if entertainers, politicians and diplomats are really all in the same elitist, greenpeace-esque boat, busily subverting the American supertanker. But those titles might come a little too close to the ridiculous irony inherent in the title - after all, what could be more elitist than suggesting that only some people, specifically people who have uniquely qualified themselves by having a nationally syndicated radio show, are allowed to comment on American politics?

But I'm not being fair to Laura, having only read the first fifteen words of her book. Perhaps part of me blames her for the late night discussions that have made me tired and cranky today. More so than usual, I mean.

2003-11-08T14:00:00.001-05:00

Phil Pretty deplorable weekend of television coming up. Tonight Al Sharpton is hosting Saturday Night Live, I wonder if there is going to be alot of funny skits where he suggests to Tracy Morgan that he burns down the writers office because of the all the jews working there or goes around accusing Chris Kattan and Horatio Sanz of raping Maya Rudolph. Speaking of rape, we have competing television movies about swarthy religious fundementalist violating our aryan sisters.

First we have the Elizabeth Smart story, because everyone knows that the best way to heal the wounds of the traumatic abduction and abuse of your young daughter is to sell the story to a movie of the week producer. Although to be fair the Smarts may just want to inform the American public about the threat of rouge polygamists abducting our children. If they can save one child from being kidnapped and forced into a polygamist marriage by a crazy Mormon guy, reopening their daughters wounds for a big chunk of cash will all be worth it.

Opposite that we have Saving Private Lynch which rehashes the couragous Jessica Lynch story as one part of a Lynchorama marketing bonanza, along with the book, XBox game and line of velour sleepware. To be fair, I am a pro-war, pro-market Republican so if someone wants to make a buck off the war, I can't fault her. What is fair for Haliburton is fair for Jessica Lynch

2003-11-06T18:43:00.000-05:00

Kate Huh. That post took an unexpected turn.

2003-11-06T18:26:00.000-05:00

Phil Coincedentially I have a cut on my inner lip which has forced me not to eat spicy foods. I think it may be a sympathy injury like gaining weight when your lady is pregnant (which I am doing in the anticipation that Kate may get pregnant some time in the distant future)

2003-11-06T14:35:00.000-05:00

Phil Caught some highlights of the "Rock the Vote" debate yesterday. Nothing much said except a couple of attempts to cast Dean as a racist, but the big story was the outfits. What was with John Edwards Sam's Club checkered shirt, the guy is a multi millionaire, he can't at least go to J Crew for his casual friday shirt? Plus how did Kuncinich and Clark both end up wearing the same black turtleneck, black blazer combo? Kucinich looked like an aging spoken word poet and Clark looked like his head was pearched on a mass of nothingness (when it is actually the opposite). Sharpton however, wasn't stupid enough to dress down for the "kids." I was looking forward to him rocking an 1980's Sharpton style sweatsuit, but he was pretty sartorially sharp, it actuallty looked like he was wearing one of Biggies awards show suits (sans feathered fedora)

2003-11-06T13:53:00.000-05:00

Kate I was able to eat, but out of concern for the injury I limited myself to a cold sandwich and a soft cookie. FYI.

2003-11-06T12:13:00.000-05:00

Kate Okay. My reader survey results are fully in, and the final results are as follows: 75% requested more meaningless blather, 25% requested more vaguely meaningful blather. Lest anyone be under the mistaken impression that we actually have four readers, one of the respondents said that she really would like more of both, so I have adjusted the results to reflect that.

To which I say, ah, f*ck it. I read two good articles in Slate for and against the war, one by Phil's favorite, the zany and irrepressible Christopher Hitchens. (Who is, inexplicably, both for this war and against the original Gulf War. Can anyone offer an explanation? No, but it's his very unpredictability that makes him so delightful.)

To please the other 75% - I wouldn't want them to feel neglected - I drank some overly hot lemon tea this morning, and burned the roof of my mouth. Will I be able to eat lunch? Stay tuned.

2003-11-04T21:25:00.000-05:00

Phil: I am awash in the sea of work, right now I assigned a half dozen questions to a student so I could steal some time away for updation. Haloween was sort of fun, although I prefer to only leave the district to eat Dim Sum or play Bridge, not for scenester house parties. Although they did have a fucking awesome DJ, I got my goofy whiteboy freak on to Cameo's Candy, and he played multiple Zapp and Roger tunes, it was like he was DJying off my IPOD. There was multiple guys dressed in Lucha mask at the party, so I kept my boozing to a minimum so I didn't challenge the doof in the Atlantis match to Mascara contra Mascara. I am a boxer no way I could do the matwork neccesary to really do justice to a halloween approximation of a Blue Panther v. Atlantis Mask v. Mask match

2003-11-03T13:43:00.000-05:00

Kate I think maybe Phil's upset because I accidentally deleted one of his blog posts the other day. Honey, if you're reading this, I'm sorry. I didn't mean it. Come back to the blog.

We went out for Halloween festivities on Friday, Phil as the Lucha Librador (sp?) Blue Panther and me as Go-go Yubari from Kill Bill. Go-go is already ridiculously cliched or ridiculously obscure, depending on who you talk to and their levels of cynicism and ennui. All this because I just wanted to wear a wig and carry some sort of destructive weapon...that's it, next year I'm going as Wonder Woman.

I've gotten some seminal feedback, too, and have decided to adjust accordingly: my friend Allyson has requested that I write more about random crap, less about, well, anything of substance. This post is my first foray into the new blog; if you're among the other person who reads this, let me know what you think! Your feedback will surely count as at least 50% of the total reader survey.

Allyson and I also decided, in one of our bound-to-be increasingly rare face-to-face meetings, that in the near future blogs will come to replace actual speaking as a way of keeping in touch. Then, as video editing equipment becomes cheaper and the cable channel spectrum grows, how much longer is it until everyone has their own reality show? The reality show add-on to your already monstrous Comcast bill will be cheaper than, say, the TiVo-lite option. This way, people will only lose touch when they fail to update their reality show on a regular basis. Phil and I, meanwhile, will continue House of Love in televised form - that is, daily airings of our latest Tekken matches.

I can't wait!

2003-10-31T12:11:00.000-05:00

Kate More non-blog time. Has the love died? Yesterday, Phil told me he was going to write a blog piece about ANSWER sponsoring the protests against Iraq, creating little strawmen out of the radical fringe so he can more effectively dismiss his new, fake arguments of the left quip-by-quip without ever having to actually consider the real ones, but I still don't see it. Promises, promises.

Is it the TiVo? We watched a bunch of good, pent up television on Wednesday, so I thought for sure the stress level would have gone down. But I guess the machine just...keeps...recording...With this and the full time job, will I ever see him again?

2003-10-28T18:17:00.000-05:00

Phil: So I got TiVo this weekend and have been watching some television. The problem with TiVo is the backlog adds up must faster then you can possibly watch it. So you get this new obligation that can never be fulfilled, I have no idea why I added the additional stress in my life. Already watched a couple of shows.

Really enjoyed this Sundays Law and Order Criminal Intent, it was a ripped off version of the Jayson Blair story with a really amusing Judd Hirsh character assination of Howell Rains. He played the Rains character as a closet racist, who wrote a condecending book about his Black Maid and like to fuck around on his wife. I hate me some Howell Rains so I dug it.

The Practice is a show I haven't really watched in years but David Kelley fired virtually the entire cast, leaving only the bald black guy, the Italian shlub and the fat lady (who looks like she lost 60 pounds so they even cut her role.) They hired a pair of generically pretty girls and James Spader, and have basically set Spader loose to be perverted and James Spadery. It is a really great way to kill off the show as Spader doing his shtick really disrupts the rest of the show in a really great way. It would be like hiring Crispin Glover for the last season of ER.

2003-10-27T17:56:00.000-05:00

Kate Wow. In the past, at least one of us has been able to carry on with the blogging flag, but this absence was unparalleled. We'll try not to let this happen again, but I wish I could make those kind of promises.

Best of the communist media (Phil when I told him I liked to read Salon, the Post, and the Guardian - "what, you don't read Pravda?"), thus far in an otherwise dull week: the Guardian's review of Top American Music Acts. I love it when the Brits rate American music; sometimes you wind up with insight, sometimes you wind up with Christina Aguilera.

2003-10-22T12:07:00.000-04:00

Kate Bullet points seem to do the trick.

Easterbrook was fired from ESPN for comments he made in The New Republic, two utterly different companies.

True, which is why, as I said before, the more appropriate response would be the discontinuation of his blog from TNR. I'm assuming you still wouldn't support this action, so it makes this kind of a moot point.

but I don't think he was out to call Eisner Shylock

Well, then, why did he? Here's his exact quote - "Does that make it right for Jewish executives to worship money above all else, by promoting for profit the adulation of violence?" I don't think you can come closer to calling a Jew Shylock if you tried. His previous statement - that sometimes Christians can be like Shylock too, but that doesn't excuse the Jews who did it this time! - and his following statement - Jews should know better than to be Shylocks by now! - unsurprisingly doesn't serve to lessen the impact at all.

It is also obvious to me that Easterbrook didn't see Kill Bill.

I agree totally, but in my eyes this only makes his whole colum, well, stupider.

fun links from mainstream commentators commenting on those shifty Jews who have brainwashed W.

What can I say about Eric Alterman's quotes? They're pretty deplorable, and I think he should have been fired from the Nation. As I said before, there are anti-semites on both sides of the political spectrum and it's unfortunate.

Michael Kinsley's quotes, meanwhile, are a lot less clear. He encourages public discussion about the role of Israel in forming public policy, which he later calls a "perfectly valid American concern for a democratic ally." That he points out that others evoke anti-semitic images in undermining that role doesn't mean that he's supporting the images - on the contrary, it seems like he's trying expose the anti-semitism that secrecy reinforces.

I can see that people might disagree on this one, but only if they doubt Kinsley's intentions. They can't condemn what he said. For example, you tell us exactly what you thought the phrase "Wolfowitz and Perle" evoked in your post today. How is it different when you do it?

So again, I think this gets back to the heart of all this - people like Easterbrook so they're willing to forgive him. They don't like Eric Alterman so they're not willing to forgive. They really don't like Michael Kinsley (these links were orginally provided by the good, non-partisan David Frum diary at the National Review, right?) so they're willing to suggest anti-semitism that isn't really there, but can be read into it if you want to look hard enough.

Well, you don't have to look very hard for evidence of the number one anti-semitic "code words" in use in politics today, those used by the fundamentalist Christian Right. They think that Judaism is a second-class religion: that Jews killed Christ, that Jews are bloodsuckers, that all Jews are going to hell. The scary thing is a lot of these people don't have a second-rate column in a second-rate opinion journal, they have serious positions of power in this country. Guess who most liberals think really has Bush's ear?

So why isn't the National Review linking to their comments, too? I find it extremely distasteful that they've turned anti-semitism into a partisan slur.

2003-10-21T20:12:00.000-04:00

Phil: I am going to bullet point a bunch of different things here

*Easterbrook was fired from ESPN for comments he made in The New Republic, two utterly different companies. That would be like Kate or I being fired for something we wrote on this blog, and since he was employed by ESPN as a journalist, it is even worse as they should give him more leeway.

*It honestly read to me more as a person who was trying to say that Jews should be ultra sensative to violence based on their cultural history, and people shouldn't value money over morals. It is a goofy argument (Why should the fact Wienstien and Eisner are Jewish make them ultra responsable for anything?), but I don't think he was out to call Eisner Shylock.

*It is also obvious to me that Easterbrook didn't see Kill Bill. He mentions how it opens with an entire family being killed as sport. That doesn't have any parallel with the actual opening of the film which has the Uma Thurman and Vivica Fox characters knife fight, he might be talking about the wedding killings, but those are never shown on screen, and I don't get how he would get "family" out of that. Also he mentions innocent victims and "the screams of the innocent" while in this film everyone the main character kills is clearly culpable. The only innocents killed are the people in the bridal party and that is the one act of violence we are clearly meant to deplore.

*Here are some fun links from mainstream commentators commenting on those shifty Jews who have brainwashed W.

Eric Alterman and our friends at the Nation

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml%3Fi=20030421&s=alterman

"This war has put Jews in the showcase as never before. Its primary intellectual architects--Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and Douglas Feith--are all Jewish neoconservatives. So, too, are many of its prominent media cheerleaders, including William Kristol, Charles Krauthammer and Marty Peretz. Joe Lieberman, the nation's most conspicuous Jewish politician, has been an avid booster, going so far as to rebuke his former partner Al Gore and much of his own party.

Then there's the "Jews control the media" problem. It's probably not particularly relevant that the families who own the Times and the Washington Post are Jewish, but let's not pretend this is so in the case of the Jewish owner-editors of, say, U.S. News & World Report and The New Republic. Mortimer Zuckerman is head of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, and Peretz is unofficial chair of the American Arab Defamation Committee. Neither is shy about filling his magazine with news Jews can use. "

News Jews can Use!! Got to love illiteration

Micheal Kinsley has an amusing column too, as he backtracks almost as fast as he moves forward

http://slate.msn.com/id/2073093/

"Regarding Iraq, the advisers themselves are also used as metaphors, often in plural to signify a stereotype. "The Cheneys and the Rumsfelds" evokes a retro world of confident white CEOs in suits, oil barons, and the military industrial complex. "The Wolfowitzes and the Richard Perles" evokes well, you know what it evokes."

What Mike? What does it evoke? Tell us?

"The lack of public discussion about the role of Israel in the thinking of "President Bush" is easier to understand, but weird nevertheless. It is the proverbial elephant in the room: Everybody sees it, no one mentions it. The reason is obvious and admirable: Neither supporters nor opponents of a war against Iraq wish to evoke the classic anti-Semitic image of the king's Jewish advisers whispering poison into his ear and betraying the country to foreign interests. But the consequence of this massive "Shhhhhhhhh!" is to make a perfectly valid American concern for a democratic ally in a region of nutty theocracies, rotting monarchies, and worse seem furtive and suspicious."

No one wants to mention that classics Anti-Semetic image, but just in case ya'll don't know it, here it is.

The "neo-con" as codeword for Jew thing is alot for naked in the less mainstream part of the left, but believe me, when it is used or "Pearle and Wolfowitz" are used as a pair, no one should doubt what that means.

2003-10-21T20:04:00.000-04:00

Kate A couple of end of day clarifications:

A writer who's job consits of giving opinions should certainly have more leeway in his speech then someone like Kate who is paid to be the face of a corporation

I didn't mean to imply that I would be fired if I made those comments to the media while acting as a spokesperson for my company. I meant to imply I would be fired as one employee saying this to another employee. This would be true whether I were the corporate spokesperson or a tow truck driver.

Yes, he's paid to give opinions; those opinions can be disagreeable, unpopular, even factually incorrect. But racist, anti-semitic, misogynist? Even if it's a different, more forgiving line than the "average person" - which I don't think it should be to begin with, why should we forgive pundits for being unable to discern the line that "average people" are able to distinguish every day? - I'm not at all convinced that it should be self-evident to him that a company that employs him should excuse that behavior. There are hundreds, even thousands of pundits who offer their opinion to the public on a daily basis without crossing that line. I don't think it's unreasonable to hold him to it.

Rush Limbaugh should also have been fired. The only difference his history of racism affords is that he should have never been hired. Is blogging any more off the cuff than television?

2003-10-21T14:57:00.000-04:00

Phil: This is going to get a little convoluted to read as I am going to address a couple of points Kate made originally, which I forgot to mention in my response. Kate mentioned

"I'll put it quite plainly - I'd be fired from my job if I made those comments and people were offended. Why should he expect any more?"

A writer who's job consists of giving opinions should certainly have more leeway in his speech then someone like Kate who is paid to be the face of a corporation. I think it is self evident he should expect more, while his comments may have crossed the line, it clearly should be a different line then an average person.

Also Kate said

"Here's the context they suggest: "Easterbrook's espousal of this theory did not suggest any real hatred, hostility, or bigotry, only moral error." They can't come up with anything better than love the sinner, hate the sin?"

I think where this situation clearly differs from Limbaugh (who quit ESPN, he wasn't fired like Easterbrook) is that Limbaugh's comments were clearly within the spirt of his ideological discourse. They weren't an anomoly they were what you would expect Rush Limbaugh to say. While Easterbrook has no such history of Anti-Semitism and the comments were contextually unusal. I don't think someones career should be ended for a one time remark (the reality of blogging is that it is much closer to off the cuff discourse then published writing, it is a good thing no one reads this, as I am sure I will shoot myself in the foot plenty of times), I didn't think it was right when it happend to Al Campanis and I don't think it is right here.

2003-10-21T14:14:00.000-04:00

Kate Funny, Phil mentions two more aspects of the firing that I didn't get a chance to address in the first post; clearly it's a subject that provokes a lot of different interpretations.

One aspect is the anti-Disney angle that everyone and their mother seems to be working. I might be the one that's a little skewed here - I used to work in PR for Disney, full disclosure - but those who know me can attest that I have no love lost for the mouse. Among journalism circles, however, that would put me leagues ahead of most writers, who are quick to blame Disney for everything from destroying the moral fabric of our society to kidnapping small children from their homes at night.

Michael Eisner is quite used to having negative things written about him. The ugly, tell-all expose on Jeff Katzenberg's lawsuit against Disney and Michael Eisner was printed by Hyperion books, Disney's publishing arm, while I worked there. If Eisner exerted the kind of pissy, personal control over the content of Disney's numerous media outlets he is accused of not only would I have seen it, the rest of the free world would have known about it, judging by how quick people are to write on the mere speculation of it.

No, if anything Disney executives, and not just Eisner, are more likely to be legitimately offended not by the personal nature of the attacks but by the gross anti-semitism of the comment, because some of them are Jewish. Much the same way I would come down harder on Phil for making what I might perceive as an anti-woman comment than his generic, quid-pro-quo insults of me.

The other aspect Phil brings up is the anti-semitism of writers who throw about references to neo-con control of the White House "in a tone and context that clearly signals Elders of Zion." A curious interpretation...obviously there are ugly, anti-semitic factions on both the left and the right, so I'm not going to try to defend every writer out there, especially when I don't know what's specifically being referred to. But if anything, the writers who are referring to neo-con control of the White House in resentful tones are usually specifically resentful of the fundamentalist Christian right, for better or worse. And certainly most who resent neo-con control of the White House resent it for the sheer idiocy on display, not for any particular religious affiliation. (Apologies for the partisan shot.)

I have a feeling that the attack on writers who take shots at the neo-cons, much like the defense of Gregg Easterbrook, is based on "context": people like Gregg Easterbrook, Phil doesn't like a lot of the people who take shots at neo-cons. The truth is Gregg Easterbrook said something anti-semitic, no matter how much he is liked; those who take shots at neo-cons, by and large (again, I'm not going to defend all of them) have not. That's the only context required.

2003-10-21T13:19:00.000-04:00

Phil : I think my take on this may be a little skewed because I really enjoyed Easterbrook's football column on ESPN, I thought it was one of the best things regularly written on football, funny and really insightful, and I hope it gets picked up somewhere. As far as his comments go, they left a sour taste in my stomach, but I don't think they come close to a firing offense. It is of course Disney's prerogative to fire and hire who they want, but I do find it strange that they were so willing to pull the trigger on a guy who's offense was an attack on their executives. I also think there are much more dangerous forms of Anti-Semitism in media which are perfectly accepted by some of the same people who are parading around with Easterbrook's head. For example I would like to see some pink slips fly around next time a writer refers to the Neo-Conservatives control the White House in a tone and context that clearly signals Elders of Zion. It is nice to see the ADL can still rip apart someone for suggesting Jewish greed, lets see them take on some more serious bigots.

2003-10-21T10:19:00.000-04:00

Kate I'm finding myself quite annoyed by the hot blog topic of the week, and the journalists and (more popular) bloggers who are falling all over themselves to excuse Gregg Easterbook's anti-semitic comments on TNR. At the risk of sounding like I'm railing against the liberal media conspiracy, here's the ridiculous part: a couple weeks ago they were foaming at the mouth to fire Rush Limbaugh for arguably less offensive comments about "social concern" in the NFL; now they're willing to forgive Easterbrook for saying that it is not right for "Jewish executives to worship money above all else" in promoting Kill Bill, which according to Easterbrook glamorizes violence. (I won't go into his insanely stupid Bill Bennett/Joe Liebermanesque comments here.)

Some may read into the motivation of Easterbrook apologists and see one protected class being valued over another. I really don't think that's the case. This seems to me to be a kind of icky case of journalists protecting their own. Rush Limbaugh was an outsider, and a hated one at that; Easterbrook, apparently, was a good man, good writer, and good journalist, and his comments deserve to be taken in context.

Here's the context they suggest: "Easterbrook's espousal of this theory did not suggest any real hatred, hostility, or bigotry, only moral error." They can't come up with anything better than love the sinner, hate the sin? Where I'm from - Richmond, VA - they trot this one out all the time to explain why there are statues of Confederate generals everywhere; In DC it's used to explain why the District doesn't have any congressional representation (it's not because they're actively racist, they just don't want another Democrat in Congress!). In both those places the explanation is inexcusable, and it should be here as well.

I'm not asking for Easterbrook to be blacklisted, and it would be more appropriate that TNR simply discontinue his blog, but I'm not crying any tears over his firing from ESPN. I'll put it quite plainly - I'd be fired from my job if I made those comments and people were offended. Why should he expect any more?

2003-10-17T17:14:00.000-04:00

Kate Our ongoing promotion of NPR continues. According to the NY Daily News, Bill O'Reilly is refusing to let NPR continue to publish the transcript of his interview with Terry Gross.

And although the transcripts to Howard Stern's interviews are lost to the ages, the story mentions that on Howard's show Ludacris accuses O'Reilly of blowing his contract with Pepsi when Bill slammed them for hiring a "thug rapper." In fact, Ludacris wrote his song Blow it Out just for Bill. People will say they're in love.

Rest assured we at House of Love won't let a single minute of O'Reilly fun pass.

2003-10-16T17:07:00.000-04:00

Kate It's been a tough, blogless week for me, and I apologize to you, our tens of readers (assuming, of course, that we have met the difficult double-digit hurdle), for letting you down.

Part of the absence was the mild depression following the Redskins' loss. While Phil waited in line for the escalators at Fedex Field, making snarky comments about all the mustaches to his friend Tom, I was sobbing gently in a corner of a condo in Arlington. This only like the eleventh year of my sobbing. Which leads to the questions: When I watch the Redskins, does that hurt their chances? Will the Redskins ever win another game? Will Bruce Smith ever get the two sacks he needs to fr*cking retire already? (Answer all these questions and more at the inside Redskins website. Unsurprisingly, if you don't care for the Redskins it won't be interesting, but they have some good articles. Damn them for taking my job.)

And despite the recent ruling reaffirming that the Redskins don't need to change their name, no matter how many people it offends, I'd still like to see it happen. I'm trying to get a tidal wave of popular support for the Washington Red Tape...any takers? Their mascot can be an angry bureacrat who subdues his opponents by swaddling them in red-colored duct tape and paper work. The battle cry could be Roll Tape Roll...Phil, I thought you at least might support this for its conservative messaging. C'mon, it'll be fun.

2003-10-14T04:14:00.000-04:00

Phil: Kate mentioned Bill O'Reily going nuts on Fresh Air, but check out Grover Norquist go even crazier, as he compares the Estate tax to the Holocaust. Can NPR please put on a Conservative that doesn't sound like an utter lunatic?

http://freshair.npr.org/day_fa.jhtml?display=day&todayDate=10/02/2003

2003-10-13T02:33:00.000-04:00

Phil: I went to Redskins park today to see the Skins get spanked by Tampa Bay. Not much relevent or true to say about the game, but I did enjoy my time at the park. I think I may dislike Tampa Bay fans even more then I hated the Jets fans I saw at the opener. All the Tampa fans had the look of Telemarketing scammers, I expected them to try to sell me copier toner. Nothing worse then having to listen to some guy in a homemade pirate scarf talk shit, when you also know he filled your inbox with Penile Enlargement ads. The really great thing about going to a Redskins game however is the awesome white man mustaches. Thick bristely ones, handlebars, fu-manchus. You just don't see white folks with Mustaches on the street anymore, but Fed-Ex field was a Stashatorium.

2003-10-10T17:47:00.000-04:00

Kate Unwarranted soft spot for Clinton, maybe. But Faludi acknowledges it and would chalk that soft spot up to being female, rather than being a feminist:

Women will forgive a politician's lapse if it at least seems motivated by a susceptibility to desire or emotion. Men afraid of sensuality will forgive the same act (and actor) as long as the behaviour can be laughed off as winner-takes-all sport.

And again, the difference between Clinton's game and Schwarzenegger is quite clearly whether the behavior was consensual. Was Clinton a prick? Undoubtedly. I guess Monica thought she made some pretty poor decisions in her choice of bf and felt embarassed by it afterward, particularly because of the way he painted her post-breakup. But this isn't about just being a prick. This is about violating a series of women in a particularly vicious, legally actionable manner, and finding all of Hollywood and the Republican party willing to give you a pass on it.

If you want to stake your claims on the gropings of Paula Jones or Kathleen Willey, then maybe you'd have a better case. I'd still make the argument: one, Clinton didn't get a legal pass on anything, and two, the most common jokes about Clinton groping are how ugly the women he chose to grope were, a sure sign of his perceived weakness. But at least it's apples to apples.

2003-10-10T16:11:00.000-04:00

Phil Interesting article and I think it hits Arnolds behavior on the nail, although I still think like many Feminists Faludi clearly has a unwarrented soft spot for Clinton. While his behavior was more syrupy and smooth then Arnolds, I think the same sort of humilation was the end result. We are supposed to buy his realtionship with Monica Lewinsky as a romatic one? He stuck objects inside her and the derided her as a deluded, obsessed liar when her story came out. I find it hard to believe that there was any real affection in any of his relationships. Certainly Arnold is a mysoginist prick, but outside of the type of game they ran I don't see much of a difference.

2003-10-10T10:50:00.000-04:00

Kate Susan Faludi's article in the Guardian dissects the dynamics at play in comparing Clinton to Schwarzenegger. Sure, she's smarter, more accomplished, more well-informed, and a better writer than I am, but she's also a day later. Thank God the blog is finally here to document it.

Phil, isn't this exactly what you imagined when you first chose the Bluebird template for your new his-and-her blog? A thoughtful discussion of gender issues?

2003-10-09T17:46:00.000-04:00

Kate I wouldn't exactly call his sexual behavior passive. Even if we completly ignore Juanita Brodderick (sic), this is a guy who stuck a cigar in Monica Lewinsky's vagina...

Since Juanita Broderick has publicly recanted this story, both to the media and in signed affidavit in the Paula Jones case, can we please put this conservative urban legend to rest?

As for the cigar story - by the way, endless thanks to Kenneth Starr for bringing this imagery into public sphere - you're overlooking a key difference between that and all the Schwarzenegger accusations. It was consensual. A tricky point, I know.

2003-10-09T15:40:00.000-04:00

Phil: Some of us actually have to work when we are at work Kate (although to be fair I am not one of them.) While it is true that one of the things about Bill Clinton that always stimulated my bile duct was his smarmy glad handing wussiness, I wouldn't exactly call his sexual behavior passive. Even if we completly ignore Juanita Brodderick, this is a guy who stuck a cigar in Monica Lewinsky's vagina. While I admit that Arnolds cigar would have been lit, I don't think tobacco insertition is a particularly passive act. Clinton is clearly the guy who runs a sensitive empathetic game, but when the chips are down he the girl ends up with odd infections and her VCR missing.

2003-10-09T11:05:00.000-04:00

Kate Apparently, one of us is committed to the blog and one of us is not. Phil, you can't just sit around and wait for your witty bon mots to come to you, you have to make them happen.

NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross aired yesterday's interview with Bill O'Reilly here, still saved as her current show. If you start listening around the 34th minute, you get to hear him have a spectacular temper tantrum: he accuses her of trying to trap him into saying something for publication in Harper's, then storms out of the studio. Good times, good times.

2003-10-08T11:05:00.000-04:00

Kate Phil is sleeping in this morning, apparently, so I feel I have a duty to blog on about Schwarzenegger in his absence...

I quickly grow tired of accusations of hypocrisy in the political sphere, from both sides. Can we just stipulate that both sides are hypocritical and move on? So while trying to avoid that can of worms, I am surprised at Republican support for Ahnuld, given his deliberately humiliating sexual encounters and rather hollow apologies now. I have no doubt that more stories will turn up, worse than the ones we have already heard, and confirming the streak of viciousness that he is only sometimes able to reserve for below-the-line film industry professionals. (Read the accounts from the L.A. Times here; login plasticuser, password plastic.)

But in some ways, I think it's the aggressiveness of the encounters that appeals to Republicans. Gender roles creep into politics in an infinite variety of ways. When Republicans seek to marginalize Democrats they would rather point to female failings than male; there's a reason that a welfare mom is a mom and not a dad. Since the civil rights movement Republicans have had a political interest in portraying the Democrats as party of women and minorities, and as the weaker party because of that.

So in comparing Clinton to Schwarzenegger, Clinton offenses are less forgivable to many because they seem exactly that - weak. There was a pathetic, passive quality to his sexual misconduct; no such passivity in Schwarzenegger. Arnold proved his dominance over those women, and in a weird, Nietzschean way that made his conduct only a boys-will-be-boys political liability, hardly a moral failing on the level of Clinton.

Lest anyone break out the "h" word, I certainly did not appreciate Clinton's behavior towards women and did not vote for him at least in part because of it. Of course, there's a bottomless pit of difference between not voting for a candidate and impeaching a sitting President, but I digress.

2003-10-07T11:03:00.000-04:00

Kate Wow. I wonder if other new bloggers have that morning-after hangover, that sinking feeling of "what did I just do?" A not-so-fresh feeling kind of thing.

It's too bad that Mr. Limbaugh doesn't seem to have any of those feelings. Not about his drug use; but doesn't he ever feel just a little bit icky about all the moralizing he's done on the subject over the past however many years? (Oh, would that I could remember a time when Rush wasn't in the public eye.) I guess when he talks about "three strikes and you're out" laws or getting "tough on crime" he's probably talking about someone else.

Or maybe the reason is because it's difficult to feel anything at all when you're on that many painkillers...

2003-10-07T03:23:00.000-04:00

Phil This morning there was an article in Salon which talks about how Rush Limbaugh's Vicodan abuse may have led to his hearing loss.

In the first test of what will surely be this blog's profound social impact, I would like to attempt to coin a new phrase. Let us call people who pop prescription painkillers "Dittoheads" and the actual drug "Ditto." A fitting tribute to Rush.

2003-10-06T19:49:00.001-04:00

Kate Even though I had neither the time nor the energy to do anything as dynamic as entering my email address at blogger.com, obviously I agreed with Phil that the world should not be denied our humor. Our love, maybe. Emasculating putdowns, well, that's really his decision. But never the humor.

And I don't know about the five of you out there who we've talked into reading this blog at least once, but frankly I couldn't wait until Phil's uncle decided to put Phil as a call-in guest on his internet radio show again to hear his well-delivered but poorly considered politics aired in a public forum. To the blog!

2003-10-06T18:31:00.000-04:00

Phil So I started this with the obviously deluded idea that other people would find Kate and I as amusing as we find ourselves. Why should the world be denied our humorous asides on entertainment and politics? Why should Kate's emasculating putdowns be limited to her apartment and not shared with cyberspace? I would assume that at least one of us will be updating this thing daily, at least until we tire of it. So check back.