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And don't get me started on Jay Leno

 As cliches go it isn’t bad: “Opinions are like a**holes everybody’s got one.”

 Surely that is not as absolute as it seems for surely someone for some reason or the other is missing an a-hole and some unfortunate is bound to have more than one as in the accompanying cliche: “He/she/it ripped me a new a**hole.”

 Such an orfice might be an unusual introduction to a critique of Jay Leno’s new primetime TV show were it not for the fact that the human a-hole, Kanye West, was a guest on Leno’s first-ever last night. Jay, the Chin Man, Leno racked up a variety of critiques overnight elucidating the good, bad and ugly of his escape from early late-night. There is too much for me to pick and choose and link. Start with Google News if you need someone to get your link up.

 This I will say about the first primetime Leno. Yee-awwwn. That’s actually an extended yawn.

 Nothing differed last night on the new Leno show from his routines off the old one. If it works, why fix it? Because it doesn’t work, Jay. It hasn’t worked in a long time. I like only so much of Jaywalking. Now they do a take-off on the local high school football extra on Friday nights where a ditzy cheerleader or acne-eaten seventh-grader gets asked the meaning of “facemask” but fails to answer the question. It is barely funny when a professional comedian like Leno does it but it sucks royally when attempted by a bored local small-market sportscaster and an assortment of clueless high school-junior high students.

 Even Jerry Seinfeld fell flat. Not because he is, rather because Leno was uninspiring. The skit with Seinfeld interviewing Oprah on screen was about the funniest piece.

 And Kanye West? If I had a pet ego I’d shave it’s ass and name it Kanye West.

 Enough said?

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This is a drill. This is a drill.

 Five of the scariest words a sailor can ever hear when at sea are “This is not a drill,” followed by “General quarters. General quarters all hands man your battle stations.”

 That only happened once to me during the year I spent on board a destroyer in the Western and Southern Pacific. We were somewhere out in the middle of the WestPac during the early evening. I was sitting on the mess decks watching some movie when I began hearing this weak, persistent sound.

 I told some guy sitting next to me: “That sounds like the general alarm.” Sure enough it was. The alarm sounded and those scary words were followed by an even scarier scene. My battle station was a couple of decks aloft in Combat Information Center. As I made it to the main deck I could see thick, black smoke coming from below decks in the engine spaces.

 We weren’t in combat conditions nor were we headed into such a scenario. I knew from the smoke that there was fire — hey, think I discovered something that day? — and that was the reason for GQ. My buddies in the Hull Technician gang,  the main damage control guys, quickly extinguished the fire and all was soon well again. But that little incident showed it is good to be trained for emergencies and know what is and what isn’t an emergency.

 I bring up this anecdote as I think of the drill that apparently scared some folks Schickless last week in Washington. By now most of you have heard about what turned out to be a Coast Guard drill on the Potomac River just about the time President Obama was to have given his remarks on Sept. 11, 2009, honoring those who were killed in the crash of American Airlines Flight 77 exactly eight years before at the Pentagon.

 The story about the Coast Guard drill in a nutshell is that, well, they were drilling with small boats on the Potomac. Some radio traffic became mixed up with the reality of what was going on. Some of the media — most notably CNN — went with what little they had and apparently caused a bit of hysteria. Then everyone began running with both hands on their asses for cover.

 I am not a big fan of CNN these days. My falling out with the cable network has nothing to do with politics as much as it does with their falling standards of excellence. They have lost many good news people. Some of the people whom I used to like have joined the “Let’s do melodrama” bandwagon which is running news into the ground.

 I have also mostly stayed quiet about the Obama administration until now. Specifically, I think Obama needs to send some of the people who run his communication shop off to somewhere less visible, like perhaps Antarctica. I would include among them Chief of Staff, Mr. Personality Himself, Rahm Emmanuel and that teddy-bear-of-a-guy Press Secretary Robert Gibbs.

 While Emmanuel did nothing in particular that I know of in this specific debacle with the Coast Guard, Gibbs came out in a snit that day blaming the entire shebang on the media and specifically CNN.

 From my experience in both public safety and as a journalist, I cannot find any major mistake made by CNN. They jumped ahead on something that could have been major, but they were handed the opportunity on a brass serving platter by the Coast Guard.

 What was the Coast Guard thinking? Or, what were they thinking that particular day and time? Or, what were they not thinking?

 News people have to perform all kind of balancing acts, but in this particular instance I think the ones who erred on the side of something major  that was given to them by the Coast Guard came out all even. In other words, CNN. 

 The Coasties who came up the idea to run a drill when they did where they did perhaps have been inside the Beltway too long. Perhaps a nice cruise somewhere will clear their heads.

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Did you know it's raining? No but if you could hum a few bars …

 The rain continues, on and off, here in the upper corner of the Texas Gulf Coast. It’s been like this for a couple of days. The weather people say we’ve got ourselves a:

COMPLEX WEATHER SITUATION WITH A COASTAL SURFACE TROUGH/WARM FRONT LOCATED OFF THE SOUTHEAST TEXAS AND SOUTHERN LOUISIANA COAST.

 I’m sure that it’s a heck of a lot more complicated than that, but it’s good enough for me. The local weather folks out of the NWS Lake Charles office say that any tropical formation “seems unlikely at this time” and the National Hurricane Center gives this system less than a 30 percent chance for any type of cyclonic activity. But having slept through Hurricane Humberto, which formed two years ago tomorrow, I can tell you that these pesky little systems which stick around in the Gulf and build can jump up quicker than a jackrabbit with a firecracker up its wazoo and commence to giving objects ashore a senseless thrashing.

 So hopefully this — system — will just be a rain event. And in such event, one needs a little background music. For that, I found this Web page compiled by a person with even more time on his hands than I have. He has put together a list of rain-related songs. I will show some he listed a few of mine too, in no particular order, and then you can look at his page and go wild. Stay dry.

A few rain songs: From the “Rain Songs” blog and a few off he top of my head.

  1. Rainy Night in Georgia — Brook Benton
  2. Let it Rain — Derek and the Dominoes (Eric Clapton)
  3. Rainy Night House — Joni Mitchell
  4. It Ain’t Gonna Rain No Mo’ — Folk song
  5. I Can See Clearly Now (the rain is gone) — Johnny Nash
  6. Blue Eyes Cryin’ In the Rain — Willie Nelson
  7. Fire and Rain — James Taylor
  8. Candles in the Rain (Lay Down) — Melanie (Safka)
  9. Raining in My Heart — Slim Harpo
  10. Thunder Island (about being caught in the rain while … ) — Jay Ferguson
  11. Have You Ever Seen the Rain? — Creedence Clearwater Revival
  12. A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall — Bob Dylan (not the kind of rain you’d want)
  13. Here Comes the Rain Again — The Eurythmics
  14. Rainy Day Woman — Waylon Jennings
  15. Who’ll Stop the Rain? — Creedence Clearwater Revival
  16. Rainy Day Women No. 12 & 35 — Bob Dylan
  17. Texas Flood — Stevie Ray Vaughn
  18. Louisiana 1927 — Randy Newman
  19. When the Levee  Breaks — Led Zepplin
  20. It Never Rains in Southern California — Albert Hammond

Of course, there are tons and tons of rain songs. It would seem people write almost as many songs about rain as they write about love. And of course there are those songs which have to do about loving in the rain (“Thunder Island”) and loving the rain (“I Love a Rainy Night” by Eddie Rabbit, which is not listed above because I don’t particularly like the song.) I am not a big fan of No. 20, about it never raining in So. Cal. either. I listed it because I was sitting somewhere to avoid a August 1977 rainstorm in San Diego where I heard on the TV playing there that Elvis had died. I thought about the irony of the Albert Hammond song and it raining like hell as I found out the King was dead. Oh, and there’s Elvis’s “Kentucky Rain.” It was an okay song, but I liked his much older stuff better.

 Oh well. Here is music to drown by. Just don’t drown.

 

 

 

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Boycott South Carolina until Wilson's gone

Poor Lord Boustany. The cardiovascular surgeon and congressman from Lafayette, La., was supposed to have his big moment in the spotlight last evening by delivering the Republican opposition speech to President Obama’s address before Congress. Instead Boustany, who once tried to buy a fake title as an English Lord, was upstaged by a GOP colleague from South Carolina who decided to scream in those hallowed halls of Congress that the President was a liar.

Rep. Joe Wilson’s outburst came when Obama said that illegal immigrants would not benefit from the proposed health care reform, despite hysteria spread by the president’s opposition. Wilson quickly sent a private apology to the president after the speech via chief of staff Rahm Emmanuel, an apology accepted by Obama.

The outburst was “spontaneous,” Wilson told the media. But it is difficult to believe the South Carolinian was sincere since he later said he was called by GOP leadership and asked to apologize. Wilson later bragged to reporters that he had only received one “negative” call and a number of positive ones from constituents regarding his actions.

It likewise is hard to believe that Wilson’s actions were spontaneous. Here is a 62-year-old attorney who served almost 30 years as an Army staff judge advocate in the Army National Guard, who has been in politics for almost 30 years and in Congress since 2001. Yet a man with such a public profile for such a long time all of a sudden yells at the President of the United States during a joint session of Congress and before millions on television, calling the president a liar?

As a personal note, I was in a situation once that was not in millions of the public’s eyes as Wilson’s moment, but had I lost control like the congressman I surely would have made the news, been fired from my job and probably vilified even more than Wilson.

I once covered an event along with four other reporters which was a rather intimate setting with President George W. Bush and his family. Afterwards, the president gave an impromptu “press conference” with the media who had been waiting outside. This was during the run-up to the Iraq war and the answers to the questions I heard from Bush sounded, to me, like total bulls**t.

No real news was made that day and as such occasions are usually that way, I was nothing more than a poorly-dressed stenographer. My story was essentially what Bush said that day. Certainly nothing slanted.

But I think back to that day and what would have happened had I acted on my impulses to shout out at George W. that he was “full of s**t.” I have to bet that it would have made some news. Probably because of the day it was, it might have even led the news. I am certain that I would have been fired, and rightly so. And being a reporter, I would have been hated more than normal by all the nut wings who hate reporters anyway and who try to find a link between the liberals and the media. I am no longer employed full-time by the media, so be it.

I have done some pretty impulsive things in my life. But even I had the self-control that day to not make a total ass out of myself. So why couldn’t Joe Wilson control himself? Methinks he knew what he was doing.

My wish is that his congressional colleagues will censure him. I also want his fellow South Carolinians to pressure his kind and their idiot governor to leave government. I suggest that those offended by Wilson’s actions — be they from South Carolina or elsewhere — boycott anything South Carolina.

Thinking of vacationing in Charleston or their beaches? Don’t go. Instead, go to the state’s official tourism site www.discoversouthcarolina.com and tell them: “I tell you what. You urge your fellow South Carolinians to call on Joe Wilson to resign and I will promote tourism in S.C., but until then, I will ask everyone I know and anyone I don’t to stay away from your state.”

South Carolina has a lot of popular colleges and universities. I bet some might even be attracted to scholars and athletes. But would you want to go to college or send your kids to school in a state that elects morons like Joe Wilson or Gov. Mark Sanford to office? Thinking about The Citadel, Clemson, Furman, South Carolina State, University of South Carolina, Webster or other great S.C. schools? Tell those schools you aren’t going, or your children won’t go until Joe Wilson goes.

If you see the “Made in South Carolina” label, find the company and tell them, sorry, no can do until you make Joe Wilson leave office.

My call for a boycott probably won’t do much. But if I influence just one person I will have considered my efforts a success.

Joe Wilson must go. The jerk.

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A rainy day in Texas but not too tightened up as of yet

 It’s been a long, hot summer in Texas. Why, you might ask, isn’t it supposed to be?

 Well, yes and no. If you start looking at numbers like averages and means and the hypotenuse of the pituitary then you start getting your eyes all glazed over after becoming confused to the point that you just want to go back to bed.

 But there it is. Today has been one of those days when it’s nice to go back to bed. At least it seems like the typical early September day in Jefferson County, Texas (home to Spindletop and the modern oil bidness, Babe Didrikson Zaharias, Harry James, Johnny and Edgar Winter, and last but certainly not least, Jason’s Deli.) It’s been cloudy, rainy and a bit on the humid side. Of course, humid is Beaumont’s middle name. Yes, I kid you not. Beaumont’s whole name is Beaumont Humid, Texas, Sr., with a Junior to be named for a Trey at a later date.

 It will only get wetter too, or so says the Bureau of Weather, also known as the “Bureau of Whether.” I am just joking. I have a lot of respect for the weather bureau and NOAA. Do you find some humor in the fact that the organization which controls the National Weather Service is called “Noah” as in “Hell, I don’t Noah, you build the ark.”

 And did you know there was a “Noah’s Ark Water Park?”

 “Rising in the Heart of the Wisconsin Drells, The Waterpark Capital of the World.” Check it out for yourself. Maybe you will even discover what the Wisconsin Drells are. Perhaps they are related to Archie Bell and the Drells . Archie Bell and the Drells hail a mere 90 miles away from me in Houston, Texas. I would not have known that fact had Archie not mentioned it in the intro to their hit “Tighten Up.”

   “Hi everybody/I’m Archie Bell of the Drells/From Houston, Texas/We dont only sing/but we dance/Just as good as we walk … “

 Then Archie and the band began tightening up everything from their drums to their bass to their guitar to their organ (or perhaps their organs) to the point that everything is pretty well tightened up. And just as tight as things can possibly be, someone from maintenance comes along, whips out his socket set and proceeds to untighten everything until there is nothing but a large mess of the untightened strewn from Houston to just the other side of Cut and Shoot. And yes, that is a real city in Texas.

 At some point in time, we hope that the meaning behind the lyrics concerning Archie and Drells singing and dancing “as good as we walk” will be revealed. I must point out here that perhaps it would not have been as funkified, but I think “or even better” at the end of  “as good as we walk” would have been an appropriate aside. It might have been funnier. But then, we are dealing with my sense of humor here. : ” :

 Anyway, it looks like rain for the next few days. Maybe even some flooding. But that’s just normal for early September in Beaumont, Texas. So I plan to stay high and dry. Well, dry at least. I plan to tighten up too. But not so much that my friends wouldn’t recognize me.