Where The Rubber Meets The Road

Recently, as many of you are aware, radio personality and reactionary right figure Rush Limbaugh was part of a consortium who’s intent was to buy the St. Louis Rams.

Unfortunately for Rush, being a polarizing figure did not help him in his quest to become part-owner of one of the worst teams in football. After much protest and public display, the group intending to bid on the Rams decided that Limbaugh was simply too much of a distraction, and cut him loose.

Let me reiterate the facts to date: Rush Limbaugh was part of a group that wanted to buy the Rams. The group refused to do business with him because he is a polarizing figure. Notice I said, “the group refused to do business with him”, and not, say, “the National Football League didn’t want a conservative owner”, or “Rush Limbaugh was banned from ever owning a team”, or, “Rush Limbaugh’s racist remarks caused the group to send him packing”. The reason why I didn’t say any of those other things is because NONE OF THEM ARE TRUE.

I make the above point because Rush Limbaugh and many of his supporters would have you believe that he was banned from the NFL because of allegations of racist remarks, and the tireless work of all the liberals in the NFL. The last bit is particularly hilarious, since the National Football League is easily one of the most conservative organizations in these United States. I mean, you can tell they’re liberal because of all the openly gay players.
Anyway.
Later, “sportswriter” and legendary résumé falsifier Mike Freeman, of cbssports.com wrote an opinion blog mwa-ha-haa-ing Rush’s ousting from the group, calling him a “race-baiter” and “pill-popper”. Freeman, for the record, is black. This will become important later.

Limbaugh’s supporters responded, conflating Freeman’s opinion with CBS policy, alternately denying Limbaugh’s remarks as falsified (despite Limbaugh himself admitting to several, and despite several more being captured in audio clips) and saying the remarks were taken out of context (what context could explain saying to a black caller, “Take that bone out of your nose and call me back” is a mystery to me). Ironically calling Freeman a hypocrite (there was a lot of this, and almost none of the examples understood how to use the word correctly), a racist, a – you know what? I’ll just let them speak for themselves (spelling and punctuation uncorrected, bold print added to display some of my favorite bits):


Freeman is who the “N” word was created for.


Weird I was thinking the same about your brotha in office.


You’re a racist douche just like your brothers Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson


Thanks for proving yourself to be the ni**er everyone already knew you were.


Are you a black sheep?


But hey, dem’s yer homies…right, Dawg?


MAke a real point please homely.


I heard that Limbaugh even attended a racist church for 20 years.  No, wait…that was Unqualified Barry!


Watch your mouth!!!   All this reverse-racism is starting to piss me off!  You better be careful, and I better not find a Koran in your house!!


Now go back to destroying your neighborhoods before planning a move to a state with an actual economy before your votes turn it into a socialist hellhole like the rat nest you went running from.


You’re just offended every angry white guy who was afraid of the PC police telling them “No you CAN’T.”  Your heyday is over.  Its going to get ugly.


You and your type, are the people who are putting society back 50 years!


The way it is now the NFL is predominantly black and overrun with DWI’s, murders, club shootings and dog fighting.


a black man calling a white man a pill popper yadda, yadda…


I, (of course me being just another Joe Plumber why would you listen?) think it is high time us white people not pay another dime to watch overpaid useless animals play sports.


And while we are at it, why don’t we just skip town and let you run this country into another African 3rd world country. Give away the wealth of the country to people who can’t earn a living and don’t want to work for it but just sit and complain about how racial it all is. Just find someone to blame for your ills and never once think to work and pull yourself from the pit of agony and frustration.


Gee. I wonder why Rush Limbaugh and his followers have had to deal with accusations of racism?

Of course, the truth of the matter is that Rush Limbaugh is not guaranteed by law the right to the opportunity to own an NFL franchise, nor is he prohibited by law the right to do so. If Limbaugh still wants to own the Rams, all he has to do is come up with the money. And be approved by the other owners. Just like his former partners do.
Unfortunately for them, Limbaugh and many of his flock are incredibly thin-skinned, especially considering how much of the above they dish out. Thus, when their hero is denied an opportunity because he is a polarizing figure, they rant and rave, and so does he, providing yet another example of why he is a polarizing figure with no sense of irony. Limbaugh’s response to the ousting in a Wall Street Journal opinion article dealt almost exclusively with the “false” charges of racist remarks (which he then conflates into a charge of racism), using the very same tactics he accuses his detractors of to bring up the specter/red herring of Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson.
Of course, all of the racism talk is completely beside the point. Limbaugh was no longer wanted by his business partners, who did not want the negative attention Limbaugh brings. Al Sharpton did not stop Rush. Nor did Jesse Jackson. Nor did the host of sportswriters, players, or even NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell. His former partners did. And instead of examining why, Limbaugh – followed quickly by his flock – immediately changed the subject. Their argument, as I understand it, is as follows:
The Checketts group (Limbaugh’s former partners) were held at gunpoint by the liberal media while Al Sharpton manipulated David Checkett’s jaw and throat and Jesse Jackson worked the tongue to force the words, “You’re out” out of his mouth.
Wait, no, that can’t be it. This is it:
Incensed by Limabugh’s desire to be a minor role-player in the purchasing of a sports team, a conspiracy of NFL players, managers, Commissioner Goodell, a legion of sportswriters, and news commentators, led by infamous supremacists Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson fabricated racial quotes, attributed them to Limbaugh, got in a time machine, went back in time to October of 1990 to replace Limbaugh with a brainwashed clone who – in a Newsday article – admitted that (among other things) he told a black caller to “Take that bone out of your nose and call me back” , used state-of-the-art synthesizing equipment to fake Limbaugh’s voice saying a number of racially charged things, then hypnotized millions of television viewers to make them think Limbaugh said that Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb’s success was actually just reverse-racism and affirmative action, and when all that failed to make the Checketts group dump Limbaugh, then the Checketts group were held at gunpoint by the liberal media while Al Sharpton manipulated David Checkett’s jaw and throat and Jesse Jackson worked the tongue to force the words, “You’re out” out of his mouth.

It’s either that, or believe the ridiculous idea that his former business partners made up their own minds, and are therefore the only ones who are responsible for Limbaugh’s ousting.

Here, let me make it easy for you Limbaugh fans, and give you the actual question: Are the members of the Checketts group in any way liable for caving in to negative publicity and ousting Rush?
And, because I like to be thorough, I’ll give you the answer, as well: No.

If you haven’t seen the movie 9, do yourself a favor.

Animated in the hyper-real style of modern CGI, it’s tone, both in theme and lighting, is dark, muted, gray. It is exactly the kind of film that blurs the line between kids’ movie and just plain good. Especially since the makers of the film (for once) knew to quit while they were ahead, and the result, while clocking in at a seemingly scant 79 minutes, is satisfying. Even at the $6.50 price of a Wednesday matinee.

Lately, here has been a rash of films with the same theme that 9 explores, the deplorable Wall-E being a particularly silly example. Ostensibly about the power of love and redemption, Wall-E is another attempt by our benevolent snake-oil salesmen of toon-based merchandising to turn aside the growing unease with which the American populace beholds what we have become. Or, more to the point, what will become of us.
Thus, post-apocalyptic redemption has been a recurring theme. From The Day After Tomorrow to Knowing, this minefield of cinematic horse apples has largely basted the brains of it’s viewers, probably in preparation for the inevitable brain-eating apocalypse coming soon to your living room. But I digress from my digression. Back to why Wall-E was such a piece of shit.
The aforementioned suckfest might have been entertaining if not for it’s lead-heavy-handed clubbing of the audience with the “point”, and the fact that even the “point” isn’t really the point. Ideally, we’re all supposed to sing along to humanity’s recall from the brink of both extinction and near-comatose, sedentary ways, all while cheering the two anthropomorphic robots as they fall in love and save the day.
Unfortunately, that isn’t the point of the movie. The point of Wall-E is that we should all just relax and stop trying to make things better:
“See? Look how bad humankind was in Wall-E! They’d destroyed their planet, grown lazy, morbidly obese, and stupid, and were utterly incapable of saving themselves. But don’t worry, the deus ex machina awaits us all! Shop! Pollute! Eat that Twinkie™! And above all, keep deregulating! No matter what we do, or fail to do, it’ll all work out in the end. With absolutely no effort on our parts.”

Many of the apocalyptic movies of late share this same it’s-okay-to-behave-like-ignorant-gluttons-because-we’ll-be-reborn-through-divine-intervention theme, which, if you haven’t already guessed, has a certain Fundamentalist Christian cum Rapture odor.

***SPOILER ALERT!!!!!***

9 does not do this.

The rebirth is not of humanity, but of life, though it is partly seeded by one human soul. The film wastes little time letting you know that humankind is no more, and will be no more. We fucked up, and we’re finished.
But there is a chance that life on Earth may not have to be dragged into the toilet and flushed away with it’s most odious malefactors. And that’s where the movie starts. The rest is an action-adventure/mystery set in the ruins of one city, between protagonists and antagonists who, while also anthropomorphic, bear little in common with the once-masters of the realm (save one, very direct connection).
At no point is there any sermonizing, anvil-heavy hints about what you should feel about all this, or product placement.
In the end, the viewer is left to decide on her or his own what it all means, but accompanied by a feeling of completion, of having seen story from beginning to end. It’s refreshing to sit through even just 79 minutes of film without being scolded, sold to, preached at, clumsily manipulated, condescended to, or insulted.
I give 9 an eight. Enjoy.

Bob Marley is Elvis in Jamaica. Maybe even Jesus. He’s certainly omnipresent. And the good people of Jamaica have embraced the western way of remembering their fallen heroes and icons: with cheap, tacky souvenirs.

There is a Bob Marley drink, Bob Marley hats, t-shirts, stickers, magnets, pipes, rolling papers, shoes, ashtrays (Kids! Kids! Stick a lit cigarette in Bob Marley’s eyes!), pins, do-rags, playing cards, towels (dry your loins with Bob Marley’s face today!), figurines, spoons, wristbands…

Well. It’s forgivable. At least, more forgivable than the constant references to Cool Runnings.

Once we reached the resort, Noelle and I were treated to a sharp decline in Marley-themed crap. Cold facecloths and more wide grins met us directly off the shuttle, and we were ushered into the lobby, our non-facecloth bearing hands filled with champagne glasses. Mind you, we were going on nearly 24 hours with little to no sleep and gave our thanks with glazed eyes and overwhelmed expressions. Nevertheless, we stumbled through the check-in process and trudged after another smiling staffer, who hauled our luggage across the resort to our room.

Only the glimpses of frozen drinks, white sand, and a clear blue ocean could have motivated us enough to do anything that first day. Those, and hunger.

It didn’t take long to settle into the all-inclusive routine, broken up with various water-related activities. Sleep, eat, tan, swim, drink, eat, drink, take a walk, shower, drink, drink, and drink. Okay, maybe not that much drinking.
The snorkeling expedition was well worth it. Fish and plant life I couldn’t begin to identify swam and wafted barley inches from arm’s length.
On day three, a shop owner offered to sell us weed, hash, oxycodone, and various other recreational drugs. I, having enough drugs in my system already, declined. He was friendly and shameless, but I guess that comes from a culture that is slightly more relaxed when it comes to recreational drug use. A distinct lack of furtiveness was evident, very unlike the paranoid culture brought on by the U.S.’s fake Drug War™.

It was the rainy season in Jamaica, and you could set your watch by the weather. Sleep in, have breakfast, lie on the beach for a couple hours, take a dip, and head inside for lunch, because rain is scheduled from noon to between three-thirty and four-fifteen. After that, it’s back to the outdoors.

Of course, you’re expected to stay outside, or at least that’s the impression I got when we decided to spend a day lounging in our giant fluffy bed, soaking up the air conditioning. The housekeeping staff comes by four times a day to make up the room, restock the minibar, turndown service, and one other duty I never discovered. Perhaps a relaxing, full-body massage with release or something.
Turndown service was the best, mainly because they’d leave behind little cards with Jamaican sayings printed in all caps, like:
RAMP WITH PUPPY IM WI LIK YUH MOUTH
Or my absolute favorite:
COW CAN’T HEAR, DEM NECK BELONG TO DA BUTCHA
Imagine that lying on your pillow when you’re abut to shuffle off to sleep. (I have in no way altered these words of wisdom; they are reprinted verbatim.)

Live music was played nightly at the largest of the restaurants. These were lounge-esque night club acts, for the most part. Singers dressed in uncomfortably heavy suits, sweating profusely and belting out Lionel Richie – no, thank you. The best of them was a trio of what could easily have been street musicians playing a blend of old Jamaican standards and similar-sounding North American songs, Bobby McFerrin-like.
Apparently hip to the fact that American men are too manly to dance, the resort had a wandering group of male staffers who plucked wives and wives-to-be up to dance, which I thought was both sweet and a little creepy. I was not too manly to dance, but largely too gimpy.

This might all seem disconnected, and it abruptly swerves from topic to topic, but it’s actually a fairly accurate chronology. The resort was designed to remove the burden of thought, and so we did little in the way of thinking. As soon as something struck our fancy, off we went to do it.
We did not scruple to cancel and change plans at the drop of a hat, and wandered around without the slightest concern for how we spent our time. Other couples seemed to have packed a month’s worth of activities into each day, getting the absolute maximum amount of “vacationing” in for their dollar. Somehow, that seemed to fly in the face of the intent. There was no desire to sample everything, and so we left a fair few things undone. I suppose that is desired by the resort as well: “Next time, we’ll do the parasailing!” Emphasis on the “next time”.

By the time we left, we had done enough to satisfy the need to ‘get our money’s worth’, and had not found ourselves bored with the place. I doubt I’d have felt the same if every day was a race against the clock.
And sure enough, the day came to leave, and we weren’t wishing for more time. Nor were we homesick. It was just the right amount of hedonism, indolence, and indulgence.
Though I would have done quite well with a little less Bob Marley.

So far, so good.

It’s interesting, since the above phrase carries with it an intimation that something is about to go wrong. So far, so good seems to be the cynic’s only nod to good news.

In this case, not so much.
We chose one of those all-inclusive resorts, taking even thinking out of the picture, which normally I loathe, but again, in this case, not so much.
We have to give our brains a rest some time.

I’ll go on and on with a pedantic, banal, detailed description of our environs another time; for now, just a few points.
First, they’re not kidding when they say all-inclusive. There is nothing to do but get up and relax. You don’t bother counting coin, hemming and hawing over the menu. You just point at what you like, and they give it to you. It’s almost a nirvana for the lazy. Generally, I like a little more interaction. But there is a fuzzy kind of freedom in dropping all of your mental burdens like a bag of bricks and being that guy. The one who sighs audibly and indignantly when he encounters a door that isn’t automatic, and must actually use his hands to open it.
Of course, that’s the whole point, here.

With a bar every fifty yards and six or seven restaurants, it’s as easy as it gets. Just walk up, accept the royalty treatment, eat and drink as you please, and walk out. Probably to another bar.
Just kidding. There’s too much to do to spend your time hanging off a lacquered shelf and being too insensible to absorb your surroundings. If there’s a water/leisure activity they don’t have here, I can’t think of it either, and so they are forgiven for it’s absence.
Of course, the drinks are not too strong – not that I’d really know, since the medications I take limit my alcohol consumption to effectively zero, and I therefore must rely on Noelle’s judgment – and the food isn’t rock-your-world awesome. Nor are the rooms off-the-charts plush. The beds are ever-so-slightly too firm, the shower/bathtub could us a little de-liming, etc. But as I remarked to my wife, we’re not paying the hefty price tag for really cool fixtures.
It’s the experience, in toto. No complaints, here.

And there is something odd about Jamaica (by which I mean the theme-park version of Jamaica, as presented by a resort owned by rich, non-Jamaican white guys). It gets into your blood. Having spent the better part of a decade hobbled by chronic pain, I am used to “can’t do” and/or simply letting things that require more mobility pass. Since coming here, I have performed feats of physical prowess and endurance I once thought lost to me, albeit with slightly gritted teeth. Jamaica hasn’t magically healed me or anything. But it has made a difference.

So far, so good. And with no expectation that things will take a turn for the worse. What’s going to happen, anyway? Somebody laughs at my sickly, pasty, fishbelly-white legs? Bah. Noelle’s already beaten them to it. And therefore, it’s cute.
No problem, mon.

I avoid comedy competitions like they’re the Dave Matthews Band. A long time ago, I was in one. Actually, two. No, this isn’t the beginning of a bitter rant by another self-proclaimed hard-done-by comic who “got the shaft” in a competition he lost.

I won. Technically.

It was after the competition that I was approached by one of the judges who anointed me. In an ill-advised moment of candid disclosure, he told me that the judges had already made up their minds who the winner was before the competition began.
“Sure, once in a dozen shows one of those other guys might have got the better of you, but we all knew you were the one,” he told me.
“Not much of a competition, then, is it?” I replied, my pale victory fading even into nothingness.
He shook his head with a patronizing smile. “This is how they all are. You’d better get used to it.”

And he was right. Sort of. The fact of the matter is that I did win. That is, I had the best series of sets and more consistently hit my groove – when it counted. Run that competition a hundred times, and you’d get hundred different outcomes. I flatter myself that I’d still have won most of them, but it would never be the same results – every contestant placing in the same order – twice.
The “sort of” would be best illustrated by the only other competition I was ever in. Despite grave reservations, I decided to participate because the carrot they were dangling was just too big. Literally, as it happened, because the carrot was big enough to drag some heavy-hitters out of the circuit to join the fun. At the time, I was barely a pro. I featured (I was the middle guy) regularly, but headlined nowhere. The comics who descended upon the competition were solid pros – folks who commanded rooms from coast to coast.
Mixed into the pool of hopeful talent were others at my level and below. One of them was a very funny and offbeat guy who was a comics’ favorite. Of course, that didn’t exactly translate to being a crowd favorite. In my humble opinion, he was simply wasting his time working in the midwest. He belonged in Los Angeles. He had that weird, character-driven energy that made people like Jim Carrey superstars in television and movies, but comparative flops in stand-up comedy.
That’s where the carrot came in. One of the judges – the only one that mattered – was an agent for HBO, and was there to scout for The Comedy Festival (formerly the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival). And our weird, offbeat, character of a local was the fair-haired boy. The chosen one. Just like I was.
Except that he came in second. Unfortunately for the powers that be, who were ready and willing to crown our boy, one of the heavy hitters hit too damn heavy to deny. Which was odd, since almost every competition is obviously rigged. And yet, those who rig them seem to think it’s still a secret.
Yes, they’re all rigged. And yes, there’s still a chance – an infinitesimal chance – that someone bucks the system. But, no, it won’t happen at any level wherein you’ll ever make a difference in your career.

Last Comic Standing was a perfect example. Ostensibly a show that allows anyone (okay, professional comics) to break into the industry (movies and television), it was little more than promotional tool for those already inside the industry. If you weren’t already signed to a development deal, then you were there to be lampooned and humiliated by wannabe Simon Cowells. Members only – no visitors allowed.

So, I hold any comedy competition, those who participate in them, and especially those who put them on in contempt. Including myself.
Oh, and the second competition? I came in fourth. That fourth felt a hell of a lot better than my previous “win.”