No time to write, so instead, here's a good link from Judy W.:

Ungodly politics: "The other day, I was reading an interview with Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean in Newsweek when I had to stop and check that it was indeed Newsweek and not, say, Christianity Today. Yes, it was indeed Newsweek. And, after a series of questions about a variety of public policy issues, Dean was asked, out of the clear blue, the following question: 'Do you see Jesus Christ as the son of God and believe in him as the route to salvation and eternal life?'"

This isn't a pro-Dean thing, this is an pro-separation-of-church-and-state thing. The follow-up interview question was, "Do you have a favorite Bible passage or book or theologian?" Please join me in a hearty and heathen "What the f*ck?"

Surfing news sites after an all-around irritating afternoon

Anti-Semitism: A Practical Manual: An member of Israel's parliament answers questions such as, "Is everybody who criticizes Israel an anti-Semite?" and "Can a Jew be anti-Semitic?"

Annotated State of the Union Address: comments by James Fallows. I'm putting this here mainly so I remember to read it; right now it's making my head hurt.

The Girls Next Door: Sex trafficking (that'd be "sex slaves") in suburban New Jersey, and elsewhere, maybe up to 50,000 in the whole country. They're lured by the promise of legitmate job titles, like nanny or waitress. Ick. Can't finish this article, either.

Machine Politics: The voting reform we begged for after the 2000 election? Not this year. Go punch your chads and cross your fingers.

For These Girls, It's Word Power: Three teenagers from the more ghetto part of my old Boston 'hood, Dorchester, have founded an AM radio station run by 12 high school girls. Rock! Though I agree with the Ms. blog that instead of shunning hip-hop entirely, they need to get them some Queen Latifah and similar.

Finally, an alternate take on the "Dean scream." I love that Al Gore was supposed to be too boring to be electable, now Howard Dean's too excitable. They say we elected Bush because we wanted a just-folks man of the people, but now a candidate shows the common trait of enthusiasm -- acts like a common football coach, in fact -- and we call him unpresidential for it? Love or hate Howard Dean, you've got to admit the media has way too much influence on this election right now. They pounded him when he was the front-runner...now John Kerry's the frontrunner, and pundits wondered whether he could take the media heat. Yet, there's no heat! Hello? Anyone? Or did Kerry buy Time Warner when I wasn't looking?

Obligatory State of the Union post
Man, that was full of crap. My favorite part was when he said "Key provisions of the PATRIOT Act are set to expire next year" and was answered by rogue applause.

I don't have time to document all his b.s., and while I've found lists of Dubya's speech lies, I haven't found any annotated ones. Has anyone else seen anything like this? I haven't kept up with politics as much as I'd like lately, and I don't want to join the Idiot In Chief in spreading misinformation.

But here's one thing that particularly unnerved me:
"I know that some people question if America is really in a war at all. They view terrorism more as a crime - a problem to be solved mainly with law enforcement and indictments. After the World Trade Center was first attacked in 1993, some of the guilty were indicted, tried, convicted and sent to prison. But the matter was not settled. The terrorists were still training and plotting in other nations, and drawing up more ambitious plans. After the chaos and carnage of Sept. 11, it is not enough to serve our enemies with legal papers. The terrorists and their supporters declared war on the United States - and war is what they got."

So, er, we should have waged a war after the 1993 bombing? Meh?

Also interesting:
"Since we last met in this chamber, combat forces of the United States, Great Britain, Australia, Poland and other countries enforced the demands of the United Nations, ended the rule of Saddam Hussein."

I was under the impression that we rather explicitly pissed off the United Nations by cowboying into Iraq when/how we did.

Then there was the stuff I knew would bug me. Insistence that the economy is great, along with references to the "death tax" and "marriage penalty" (just go ahead and call them the Why Should My Children Have To Work For A Living Tax and the Middle-Class Suburban People Penalty). Social values out of the 50s (abstinence education, marriage = one man + one woman, heavy-handed and repeated references to God). Dang, John Kerry looks good after all that blather.

And, as a bonus, massive hypocrisy about the evils of drugs. Most irrelevant rant of the night: how pro athletes on 'roids are a bad influence on the kiddies. Not incorrect, but...rearrange deck chairs on the Titanic much?

The proposal to fund programs to help ex-cons get back into society sounds good, forcing me to wonder what's wrong with it. There's always something.

I took a phone call towards the end and missed the final, God-heavy punch:
"My fellow citizens, we now move forward, with confidence and faith. Our nation is strong and steadfast. The cause we serve is right, because it is the cause of all mankind. The momentum of freedom in our world is unmistakable - and it is not carried forward by our power alone. We can trust in that greater power Who guides the unfolding of the years. And in all that is to come, we can know that His purposes are just and true."

Yes! America is right because God says so!

Finally, I heard Dubya utter the non-existent word "uncertainness" during the speech. I wrote it down. No online transcipt has it. Am I going deaf, or does the smirking chimp just get his verbal gaffes automatically corrected for official record?

I shoulda done the drinking game.

Where's my cane, sonny?
"Yes, my friends, anyone who actually remembers the Stone Roses is now officially old."

The article is about a new radio station in LA that's playing what I like to call "alternative oldies." The wonks at Clear Channel call it "alternative gold;" either way, I expect it to be a fairly common radio genre soon enough. I'd been wondering when it would happen on actual radios, not just on the alt.80s and alt.90s custom stations available on Net radio.

I agree with the LA Weekly article that such stations, in addition to taking us down memory lane and playing the more palatable mainstream hits of today, should be trying harder to introduce us to new stuff -- we're not that old.

Then again, I'd already decided this particular student needs glasses...

One of my students told me today that someone on America's Next Top Model looks just like me. My first thought was, "Little brownnoser." My second was, "Maybe all white people look alike." (Hey, if white people think it about Asians...)

This one is the closest, but, ah, no.

In high school, I once got "You know, you kind of look like Chrissie Hynde," but that was during my punk stage, from a boy who was probably trying to get in my pants.

(If you don't know what I actually look like, it's a little something like this.)

This ain't no disco, this ain't no Livejournal, this ain't no foolin' around
Okay, I realize I've been a bit "Dear Diary..." lately. I can't help it. For a long time, life was hard. Now it's getting easier, and you'll excuse me if I want to shout it from the rooftops that for once my life doesn't suck.

Anyway, it's an election year, so expect plenty of Outside World commentary in the next few months. To start with, John Kerry? What the hell? Where did he come from? (I know. Massachusetts. Shh.) My assessment of Dean's third-place finish in the Iowa caucus is that if you repeat a lie enough times -- "He's unelectable" -- it becomes true. Sure, he's a loudmouth, but isn't that just what we need to get the swing voters' attention? I'm not gung-ho Dean like I was back when he was a dark horse, but I still think we could do a helluva lot worse.

I must admit, I hadn't paid too much attention to Edwards until now -- a first-term senator? Not gonna happen -- but so far, I like what he stands for. (Except that war thing.) Again, we could do much worse. I'm going to stay tuned.

Though I wasn't going to vote for him in the primaries, I feel awful for Dick Gephardt. The union guy getting shoved out of the race by Kerry, the ketchup heiress's husband.

My favorite assessment of Kerry is Rick's opinion that Kerry is running for president because he "thinks it's his turn." Another entitled Skull and Bones Yalie. Blech. Or maybe I'm just sick of him because I lived in Boston for a while, and left Boston angry at Kerry (who's glossing over his anti-Vietnam War protest days on the campaign trail in favor of highlighting his Vietnam War service to a paranoid public) for voting for that stupid Iraq war.

That said, if Kerry gets the nomination, I'll support him 100%. This from someone who's voted Green in the last presidential election, and the gubernatorial election before last (not the Arnold debacle, the absurd race in Massachusetts that pitted an awful Democrat against an awful Republican). I can't take another four years of Bushwhacking.

And I even saw a roadrunner
Enough about Vegas (I'll finish it and post a link at some later time). Now I've seen the real desert, the part with no casinos or, god forbid, fountains.

I spent the weekend in the general vicinity of the Joshua Tree National Park, which is now high on my list of my favorite places anywhere, ever. I scrambled up some rocks, felt all the moisture sucked out of my body, and, at night, remembered what 35 degrees Fahrenheit feels like. Especially if you're somewhat falling-phobic, there's nothing quite like standing on top of a big-ass rock outcropping (after minutes of stalling from your psyche and encouragement from your peers) and looking out bizarro lunar desert landscape. Nothing like an unpolluted desert sky after living in LA.

The trip was organized by some of Rick's classmates, who I'll now even go out on a limb and classify as my friends, too. Grad students aren't supposed to have a life, so it's glorious to have fallen in with a work-hard/play-hard crowd. Wouldn't you know it that, among six intelligent people (five of whom are pursuing PhDs) we all forgot something. This ranged from minor things to soap all the way up to "Shit, I left my bag in my apartment," followed by a trip into town for some supremely cheap and ugly closeout garments. Ah well, we had the important things, like enough gas to get us there, enough water to not die, and the gargantuan 10-person tent later christened "The Condo." We even figured out a way to get six of us into one small car for the trip from the campground to the park (not recommended).

That night, as we got wasted around the campfire (sshhh), a big RV (or was it a bus?) labeled Three Doors Down drove up and settled into a campsite near ours. It took us forever to identify a single one of their songs, and when someone did, we decided they were a crap band and we should harass them. Sadly, we never did -- it was probably the crew, not the band, anyway -- but among the better suggestions were, "Aren't you the guys who sing that song, 'If you wanna be my lover, you gotta get with my friends...'" and "Aren't you the guys who sing that song, 'doo doo doot, doot doo doo doot..'" (Who can tell those crappy prime-number bands apart?) When not engaged in this puerile activity, we had other puerile activities to keep us busy, such as attempting to belch the name of Rick's grad school program and trading embarrassing fart stories. Maturity is for wusses.

In other music-oriented news, we tried to replicate and photograph this album cover. The results were inaccurate but funny, as they all put on their most thoughtful, arty facial expressions and tried not to laugh.

Part of me now wants to piss off to Bumblef*ck Nowhere Desert Country, work at a bar, and go hiking every day. Not gonna happen, but nice to ponder. Everyone, to the desert. Seriously. Preferably with a big pack of freaks.

Another prefectly good conspiracy theory bites the dust
Dick Cheney is alive. A trustworthy friend of mine saw him last week. Damn.

"It's not what it looks like..."
On my way to my tutoring gig today, I stopped by my friendly local homebrew supply shop for some priming sugar (you need it for putting your beer in bottles, which we're doing Monday). After emerging with my purchase, I tossed it on the passenger seat and drove off.

Two stoplights later, I realized maybe I shouldn't be driving around LA with a big baggie of white powder plainly visible. Oops.

(I guess this should have gone in my long-neglected beer blog. Oops again. Anyway, busy busy and going camping for the weekend, see you Monday.)

Starting at the beginning: Day 1, LA to Vegas
The drive from LA to Las Vegas takes about four hours. Somewhat longer when it's raining in LA, because Angelenos can't handle precipitation. (Delivered like Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men: "You can't handle the rain!") Auto malls, strip malls, sprawl, sprawl, more sprawl, and then an hour later you're in the mountains.

Specifically, you're in the San Bernardino Mountains, the ones that burned. How can mountains burn? The green and brown scrubby plant life on the mountainside gives way to charred black rock. Cheerful.

Not long after, we discovered the Wall Drug (official link) of California. For what seemed like about 100 miles (but I must be wrong...surely it was more like 150) we got ad after ad for the Mad Greek in Baker, CA. The Mad Greek is world-famous! Gyros! Strawberry shakes! World famous! In just 35 minutes! 30! 25!Granted a Greek restaurant in the middle of the desert is intriguing, but enough is enough. Many of the ads, interestingly, weren't on billboards but on trucks and trailers that, for all I know, were abandoned in the desert.

Baker itself, by the way, is the Bunghole of California, taking its place in Jen and Rick's vaunted Bunghole USA Hall of Fame alongside Erie, PA and the entire state of Idaho. Other over-advertised Baker tourist traps included Alien Fresh Jerky, Bun Boy (sounds dirty, but just a restaurant), obscenely expensive fuel ($2.35/gallon is the cheap stuff? Well, it beats running out of gas in the desert), and the World's Largest Thermometer. The latter is a letdown as it's digital, not mercury. What a rip.

We saw some bizarre, yet very cool, desert plants along the way, including the wacky looking Joshua Tree. Also, a mirage. It looked like a lake, but was really a dry lake. I can see how stuff like this drove the covered-wagon settlers totally insane, while Indians hid behind rocks and laughed at them.

So usually, you drive across a state line and there's no dramatic difference. Not so, when you cross from California into Nevada. I knew something had changed before I ever saw the "Welcome to Nevada" sign, because I'd seen the roller coaster. Flat, funny plants, sand, flat...giant tacky border town! You're over the line, now quick, GAMBLE, I TELL YOU, GAMBLE! Don't wait the hour to get to Vegas, just GIVE NEVADA MONEY NOW!

Ahem.

This is also about where you start to see truly incredible (in the "I don't believe it" sense of the word) sights like golf courses in the middle of the desert. But environmental/ecological waste was just one of the many aspects of Vegas I had prepared myself to ignore. I will not be a humorless liberal, I will not be a humorless liberal, I will not...

Eventually, a city skyline rolled into view, and we knew we must be almost there. The famed Vegas Strip was easy to find from the highway, as was our hotel. Which was also a casino. I know. That's just how it's done.

But first, we had to drive past some of the most ostentatious theme park wankery in the city. It was dazzling, mind-boggling, nauseating, laughable. My oh-so-clever running commentary went something like this:

"Dude. It's the frickin' New York skyline...and a giant gold lion...dude, what the f*ck?"

Of course, the real Manhattan skyline doesn't have a roller coaster. I was starting to detect a theme. It wouldn't be the first.

To be, as they say, continued.

Sweet! I'm officially from Dullsville!
I always knew it, now everyone knows it, thanks to a New York Times article about kids from my hometown all wide-eyed in New York for the day.

Asked what they might normally be doing had they stayed in Fair Lawn, Dave rolled his eyes. "There's a 24-hour CVS pharmacy, and we hang out there," he said. "We call it Club C. That's how sad our lives are."

For the record, I never hung out in the CVS parking lot, though it was an institution back in my high school days, too.

What were the lame hangouts in your suburban hometown?

Way down yonder in Personification Nation...
(Mid-morning. Average-looking, 30-ish woman in green flannel pajamas reaches the top of a staircase, breathing slightly heavily. She is in the hallway of an apartment. She knocks on door number 3.)

(An middle-aged balding man with a beer gut and ratty clothes opens the door. He's smoking a cigarette.)

Man: What?
Woman: I've been looking for you.
Man: And I should care. Who the hell are you?
Woman: My name is Jen.
Man: (puffs cigarette) Yeah, whatever. Come in. I'm Los Angeles.
Jen: I know. (stepping inside, looking around) I didn't think you'd live in a fourth-floor walk-up.
LA: (shrugs) I'm full of surprises.
Jen: And this place is kind of a dump. Jeez, *you're* kind of a dump.
LA: This from someone wandering around in her jammies.
Jen: Hey, your fault for waking me up again. Besides, I'm not the one always telling everyone they're fat, old, and ugly.
LA: (smirks) Ironic, isn't it? And they all buy it.
Jen: Yeah, that's great. Good for you.
LA: Well, sit down and tell me what you want so I can get on with my day...fattie.
Jen: (sitting down on ratty couch from the Salvation Army) Oh, real nice.
LA: You're not here for nice.
Jen: True enough. But I'm here to ask why exactly you're so goddamn mean to me. To everyone.
LA: It's what I'm good at.
Jen: But it's so unnecessary!
LA: No it's not. Even with me being a right bastard, there are still too many people here. You've seen the traffic. It's my version of population control. I've got to send the weak ones crying home to mommy.
Jen: That's fine for the deluded actors from Idaho or wherever, but you know, I've got to be here. I've got a husband who'll be in school here for another five or six years.
LA: Leave him. Not my problem.
Jen: Leave him over you? I don't *think* so.
LA: Then quit your bitching. Besides, you helped pick me. Should have gone to Michigan.
Jen: I was cold!
LA: You and the rest of the world. Goddamn this nice weather, or you'd all stay home. Okay, should have gone to North Carolina.
Jen: Booooring.
LA: And I'm never boring. So you got what you wanted. Remember what you used to say about Boston?
Jen: That it's like a nice, dull guy everyone tells you should marry but you just don't love?
LA: That too. What else?
Jen: That it's like an old, comfortable sock with holes in it?
LA: That one. You wanted a challenge. You got one.
Jen: I wanted a challenge; I didn't want to starve.
LA: Fine. You're not starving.
Jen: Thanks to Mr. Visa and Ms. Mastercard, no.
LA: At least you're middle-class broke and *have* Mr. and Ms. Credit Line to help you out between paychecks. You're asking the wrong city to feel bad for you on this one.
Jen: Sure, but...how to say this without sounding entitled? Doesn't it count for anything that I'm skilled and college-educated? Shouldn't I at least be able to get a job at Starbucks? Shouldn't I be able to get as much catering work as I need? It's not like I'm looking for dream jobs here.
LA: You should thank me. Who really wants to work in the service industry? Especially if you're as skilled and la-dee-dah as you say?
Jen: I don't *want* to work in the service industry, but I need paychecks while I work the rest of it out.
LA: Whatever. In Boston, where everyone like you is too good to work a crap job, you had all the crap work you wanted. Big deal. So you'd have been my age and still serving people dinner. Bills paid, but so what?
Jen: Not necessarily.
LA: Yeah, necessarily. You needed me to give you a kick in the ass. You needed a place where you practically need an agent to get crap jobs, because you needed to learn you don't really want them.
Jen: Right, but when I tried to get a regular corporate job, you wouldn't let me do that, either.
LA: That's a crap job, too, just one that pays marginally better.
Jen: You sure don't make it easy.
LA: You know those women who never break up with their lousy boyfriends until they have a new one lined up?
Jen: Yeah.
LA: You never liked them. So don't worry about keeping lousy lifestyles until you've got a new one lined up.
Jen: There's a difference between being broke and being single.
LA: Yeah. You'd rather be broke.
Jen: (ponders)
LA: So for the tenth time, quit your bitching. You need me.
Jen: Christ, not another character-building experience.
LA: Yes indeedy.
Jen: It's built, it's built!
LA: Jeez, I hope not.
Jen: You are *such* a mean bastard. Could you maybe be just a little nicer to me in 2004?
LA: You act like there's some *nice* LA tied up in the closet.
(A loud thumping and crashing issues from a hall closet. Some muffled sounds like someone yelling through a mouth gag.)
LA: Er, anyway, it's time you were going. I've got an 8:30 with some dumbass from Hollywood whose nose job went wrong, then an 8:45 with an East LA dude with two jobs and a son in a gang.
Jen: Okay, Los Angeles. (opening the door) Happy New Year, you freakin' jerk.
LA: Happy New Year, neighbor. (watches her walk away) (yelling down the hall) Uh, I mean, "Go home, ugly girl!"
Jen: (turning around) Nice try, a-hole. I am home.

Thinking about Vegas for too long makes my head hurt, so you're just going to have to get this in non-chronological chunks.

Rick and I spent part of Sunday downtown. Downtown Vegas is the old school, Sin City part of Vegas that you imagine from the movies. Hard-core gambling, much less theme-park stuff ("Look! It's the Eiffel Tower!") for the kidlets. The slots have better odds here. It's where Hawaiians come to gamble, so you know it's got to be cool. It feels a lot more Wild West, like if anyone bothered to point a gun at you it would be an 1800s revolver shooting a flag that read, "Bang!"

We spent some time absorbing the atmosphere at Binion's Horseshoe, a legendary downtown casino that hosts the World Series of Poker every year. This is where our friend Tom and friend-of-friend Mat were holed up for hours playing 3-Card Texas Nosepickins, or whatever poker players do all day. Compared to other Vegas casinos, particularly those on the South Strip (more on that later), Binion's was practically sedate. Lots of gaming tables for gamblers who mean business, fewer slot machines for amateurs like myself -- that means less headsplitting clanging and banging. Fewer flashing neon thingamabobbers, more wood paneling and red carpeting. The cashier windows had bars on them, like an old bank. The nubile cocktail waitresses in silly theme outfits on the Strip? When they're middle-aged and pot-bellied, they come to Binion's to die.

It's hardcore, but it was also one of only two places in Vegas (<--- another teaser) where I got any sort of idea of how the Vegas myth might have come to be, and probably the only place where I felt any genuine love for the art of the game. There was a poker hall of fame on one wall full of photos of men I've never heard of. On the opposite wall, closer to the actual tables, was another photo gallery, this one of each year's World Series of Poker winners. Some of the faces looked familiar from the hall of fame. Rick and I noted with some awe that a few of these dudes had won twice, and one had won three times. One of the casino workers, a gray-haired man, walked over to us, reached up, and tapped on the photo of the three-time winner.

"That's Stu Ungar," he said wistfully, "Some say he was the greatest poker player who ever lived."

We make noncommittal noises of approval.

"He had an incredible mind for cards. Simply amazing. Sad, though, he overdosed on drugs a few years back."

We make noises of sympathy.

"What a great mind for cards, though. No one else like him. Not just poker, he was the best gin rummy player in the world."

How odd to think of how many subcultures have their own celebrities most of us will never of. How sad to think how many screwed up stories like this must come out of Vegas.

We adjourned to the minimal snack bar, where the nice senior citizen lady behind the counter volunteered to make a fresh pot of coffee for Rick. She fussed over this task, happy to have something to do (we were the only ones there), mumbling about how it's always better to have fresh coffee, she just can't stand old coffee, no sir. I asked for water, and got some free Vegas tap water in a paper cup. As the coffee brewed, we tried to determine which was the least dirty table to sit at, before the nice senior citizen lady realized the tables were narsty and got happy to have yet another task to fuss over.

When Rick got his coffee, I asked him how it was.

"It's fresh," he said diplomatically.

Later, Rick had walked off for about two minutes, and I was thumbing through my copy of Lonely Planet California, when a 60-something relic emerged from nowhere and tottered over to me.

"What are you reading?" he asked enthusiastically.

"Oh, just a tourist book," I said.

"California! Do you live in California?"

"I do."

"So do I, but I'm getting tired of it." He leaned forward conspiratorally and put his hand on my arm. "A few too many of the Mexican persuasion these days."

"There are one or two Mexicans in California, yes."

"Come with me! You can move with me to Iowa!"

"Well, I don't know....Iowa..."

"It'll be great! Listen honey, I've got to use the men's room, but we'll talk about this more when I get back."

Hilarious. I found Rick post haste, and that was about when we decided we'd had enough of Old Skool Vegas. Long may it reign.

A Vegas wrap-up is forthcoming. Don't worry, I'll have plenty of time for it now that I'm working 20 fewer hours a week. Yep, I've now even been laid off from a cashier job. Don't get me started. Not that I'll miss waiting on the children of the stars, but damn.

First, however, I must vent my spleen on the topic of the Princeton Review.

I just returned from an interview with them, to teach SAT to the children of the wealthy instead of ringing up their tater tots. Would have been an improvement, albeit not much of one. Anyhoo, they call part of the screening process an "audition," and -- true to the SAT analogy Underemployed actors:LA::Maggots:Rotting flesh -- there was a young blonde woman whose 5-minute teaching demo showed us how to speak in an English accent. A bad one.

After I'd already cleared my schedule, shown up, taken their diagnostic sample SAT, done my own teaching demo (how to make beer, natch), and generally given these cretins (SAT word) too much of my time, I discovered in the interview that the Princeton Review's exclusivity contract says you can't tutor or teach anywhere else while you work for them. I pointed out that I teach reading to 7th graders, not SAT test prep. No dice.

Have I mentioned that no part of this process involved a resume, and they flat-out tell you they don't care if you have any experience as long as your "audition" is good?

The answer that best summarizes the main point of this passage is:
a) The Princeton Review wants amateur night, they'll get it -- but they won't get me.
b) Parents paying hundreds of dollars to send their kids to Princeton Review are paying a premium to have them taught by charismatic cuties who may or may not have any teaching experience, and are definitely not teaching anywhere else at the moment, like a real school.
c) F*ck off, Princeton Review
d) All of the above.

I'll be playing nickel slots in Vegas til Monday (well, not the whole time...). Happy new year.