I Think I Must Be Missing Something Here.

Is there something I don't understand about this whole stem cell thing? Is this somehow not a no-brainer?

I'll take one second here to just say I LOVE when Congress squabbles...the Senate comes up with this whole smooth plan on how to give George W. Bush some political cover, and then the House is all Rowdy Little Brother about it and doesn't really follow the plan. Awesome. GO CONGRESS!

Okay, so the stem cell thing. I THINK I kind of agree with the whole no fetal farming thing. If nothing else it seems creepy - creating mini humans with the express intent to destroy them? Yeesh. If that was the only way scientists were proposing to get stem cells, then yeah, I'd want them to come up with another way. But the unused in vitro fetuses...that's where I'm missing something. Conservatives don't rail against in vitro fertilization in any meaningful and/or loud way on a regular basis, but the fetuses that aren't implanted and carried to term just get thrown away for the most part.

So...on the grand scales of morality and common sense, isn't it better to use the unused fetuses to help develop cures for people with debilitating diseases than to throw them away? Isn't curing diabetes a more noble end for these fetuses than a biohazard dumpster? I feel slightly insane over here, because people are in such a LATHER over this and it seems so simple to me - fetuses get "made," one fetus gets implanted and carried to term, other fetuses who would otherwise be thrown out are used for stem cell research. Either way, those fetuses are not going to see childhood or adulthood. Period the end. So why the outcry over their being used for something useful rather than just being thrown away?

I understand that this is a lot like organ donation...I think everyone's heard or had concern over whether or not emergency personnel or hospital doctors will work as hard to save your life if someone in Omaha REALLY needs a heart and shares your blood type. You kind of have to trust that they will, and that there are rules in place governing it, and that if in fact, they do lose you, your organs will be doing great things for someone else. An organ donor can save - SAVE - up to SEVEN lives. How many lives would one fetus save?

This is just mystifying to me. The benefit seems so enormous, all around.

Maybe I'm missing something.

"Pay No Attention to That Man Behind the Curtain!"

A few years ago, a friend of mine had a visit from his grandfather. We all went out to dinner, along with said friend's apple of his eye and our roomie, at Chef Geoff's in DC. My friend and his family are Jewish, and his grandfather, being fairly large of income, donates a good amount of money and time to helping Israeli charities...for instance, I think he donated the funds to build a gym for schoolkids. Cool stuff like that where you're not arming militias, but rather helping make life somewhat more normal for kids who had the crap luck to be born in a perpetual war zone.

Anyway, one way or the other the Israeli-Palestinian debate came up (I think there was a ruckus going on once again), and I would have expected that both my friend and his grandfather would be solidly on the Israeli side of the debate. Instead, the grandfather sat at the end of the table and told us that really, both sides needed to be allowed to just duke it out until someone won, because it's been going on for thousands of years and diplomacy is not really working in any significant way. I found that really startling, but there's a certain amount of sense to it - how will you ever resolve this, when everyone now, Israeli and Palestinian alike, has a relative, or a friend, or a child who has been killed or wounded or discriminated against at the hands of the other side? How will you negotiate peace with Hamas? Because Hamas doesn't just not really like Israel, guys, they refuse to acknowledge them as an entity. If kindergarden kids ever get ahold of that technique, it is going to be ON in the schoolyard.

Kid 1: You took my swing!
Kid 2: That's 'cause you're ugly!
Kid 1: Well you're stupid!
Kid 2: Well I refuse to acknowledge your existence!
Kid 1: Um.

I have to say that I really do not like Bush's strict adherence to the Israel = good policy, which I think is misguided to begin with. I generally am more okay with Israel's behavior, but I think it's really a lesser of two evils scenario - it's a day by day determination of who is being a less violent terrorist. Both Israel and the Palestinians are dealing with disputes by killing or threatening to kill the other party, and if any other nation pulled that shit, it would be condemnation and finger pointing all over the damn place. In this situation, particularly, I think singing "Stand By Your Israeli" is a particularly bad idea, because this is a BAD situation. Maybe I don't have the whole picture, but from what I'm hearing and seeing, this is an excuse for Israel to do some shit-stirring. Can anyone explain to me why when Israel started moving troops and SHOOTING THINGS over the kidnap of a soldier, no one took them by the shoulders, shook them real hard, and said "guys, SERIOUSLY"? I mean, not to discard the soldier, because he is NOT in a good place right now and no one deserves this guerrilla-kidnap routine, but...one soldier? To base an entire military action, and arguably an act of war, on? Shady.

My favorite line of this conflict, by the way? "Israel has stated that these are legitimate targets, blah blah blah." Okay, here's the thing...I would consider placing George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, and Donald Rumsfeld in a square, standing in the middle with a crowbar, and then spinning around gracefully, whomping each of them repeatedly in the head with said crowbar to be a completely legitimate action that was wholly deserved by all four. But my saying it does not make it so. Also? THE SAME RULE APPLIES FOR NATIONS! I'm sure Hitler thought that the Holocaust was a totally legitimate, great concept! But he was wrong! Like, couldn't BE more wrong! Same for Lenin and Stalin! Thought they had great ideas! Polar opposite of legitimate! WHY DOES IT TAKE VLADIMIR "LET'S BRING BACK THE GLORY DAYS OF THE KGB" PUTIN TO CALL BULLSHIT ON SELF-DECLARATION OF LEGITIMATE BEHAVIOR AND TARGETS?!

So, moronic statements aside, this thing has gotten even more exciting. While Israel was busy poking the beehive that is Gaza, Hezbollah got sad because they weren't invited to the party, so they ganked TWO Israeli soldiers. Naturally, Israel whipped around, snarled, and started whomping them back in response, and now you've got Israel and Hezbollah fighting, with the actual government of Lebanon kind of off to the side going "oh, shit" and Israel is demanding that the Lebanese army be deployed to deal with Hezbollah, but here's the thing...according to several dudes I have heard on NPR in the past few days? Hezbollah could take the Lebanese Army. (Confidential to Lebanon: Shoulda gotten Hezbollah the hell out of there before they got organized, armed and powerful enough to control your country. I'm just saying.) And of course, Bush & Co. are right in there with the "IRAN AND SYRIA ARE DOING THIS," which, yes, Iran and Syria are well known for being supporters of the Hamas/Hezbollah Dynamic Duo, but that doesn't mean that they are calling the shots. They should cut the shit and stop funding/arming these groups, but I will be ASTOUNDED if they do. Even if they stop doing it so overtly, they'll find a way.

We're only a week into this and already I'm ready to just see all the people who aren't Israeli or members of Hezbollah get evacuated and then have the two parties just beat the shit out of each other until there's no one left. Intelligently, I know that's not the solution, but I think this is one of those situations where LONG AGO, the international community, as one, should have said to ALL parties involved, "this is not an acceptable way to resolve your differences. Talk about it, write up an agreement, or just plain ignore each other, but as long as you're reacting to differences of thought by killing each other, you will not only receive no aid in ANY form from us, but we will also do everything in our power to make sure you have no assistance from non-nation groups. Doing business with you will become illegal in our countries, and we will stictly enforce it." And then - and this is the important part - sack up and do it. There would be a lot of anger and a lot of hurt feelings, but come on...there is no crying in baseball, girls. You don't get to reap the benefits due to a contributing and law-abiding nation while engaging in a variety of terrorist actions.

This whole thing is foolish and has been tolerated way too long.

So let me tell you about my night last night. Bogey of the Basement decided to call in to work and spend the time drinking. Fine. I watched Transporter 2 and Unleashed with him, along with an episode of a Batman cartoon that was neat. So after that, I went to bed, as did Speed, and we read for a while before it occurred to Speed to go out and make sure Bogey had in fact called in. Wakes him up - by clapping loudly, after regular speech fails to get the job done - and asks if he called in. Bogey responds...in exactly zero real English-language words. Great. Dude needs to call in, and he's babbling. Speed gets him to regain his formation of sentences powers, and he says he'll "call into work after he finishes [this thing on TV] [which in this case was the menu of the Batman DVD]." Speed goes back out to check and make sure he called in about an hour later and the situation basically replays itself. We assume that he just passed out again after Speed checked on him, because his mom called at like 5 am to ask if he was there - work called her looking for him. GOOD JOB, BOGEY. Bless his little heart, and he was probably just reveling in his car being fixed after his Deerslayer Experience and being able to just chill out, but dude...do what you gotta do, eh?

In other news, I received the most awesome shoes ever in the mail from Zappos the Awesome. They're called "Courtesan" from a shoe company called Irregular Choice and they are stunning...a short, pointed toe for a really funky look, and lots of cool detailing with ribbon roses and beads. The heel is REALLY comfy, too, which is unusual for such a tall - 4" - heel. Irregular Choice's shoes are SO fantastic...they definitely have some crazy shit, but the detail on so many of their shoes is AMAZING.

Also, I am learning candlepin bowling (invented in Worcester and really only played in New England!), and Speed's Mommy gave me her old bowling balls, so Speed's going to take them to use at his bowling league tonight so he can clean them and spiff 'em up since they've been sitting in a closet or something for a while. Yay! I totally, totally suck at candlepin right now, but I am showing improvement. We're going to go again this Friday. Last Friday we went together and stopped by Skylite afterwards, and then the Friday before that we went with Ma and Dad, then went to Sakura Tokyo.

We have found a new favorite Japanese place, though, Osaka, right in White City, over the Lake Quinsig bridge maybe a block up from Vinnie Testa's on the opposite side of the street. They have FANTASTIC sushi - perfectly seasoned rice, very fresh, very flavorful fish - and the charred flesh eater of our duo says that their filet mignon and chicken is very good. I order the sushi dinner, which arrives in this REALLY cool boat dish and has six California Rolls and an assortment of nigiri sushi. I have also had lunch there, which is a steal for something like nine bucks, which gets you a salad and 8 pieces of sushi. The presentation is great. Speed praises the variety of mix-and-match type dishes, i.e. chicken and steak, steak and lobster (not that a crustacean will ever pass through his ruby lips), etc. He liked the chicken and filet combo, in which all of the meat is cubed and cooked with great seasoning. We also prefer the salad dressing to Sakura Tokyo's...it's a little less bitter. It's a really cool little place, with a bunch of cooking tables, if that's your thing, but the rush gets HARDCORE around 9, so we recommend going earlier, around 6:30 or 7. Check it out, man!

Don't say I never gave you good advice.

Public Works

When I was in elementary school at Nelson Place, a dude came in and talked with us about Union Station. Now, I'm not 100% sure where the guy was from - presumably one Worcester public works department or the other - but we sat in the library and listened to him talk about how it had been a total mess, even talking frankly about how bums lived in it and other things people don't usually mention to elementary school kids. He told us about how they had the old blueprints for those fantastic towers and the interior, and that they were making enormous molds to recreate all of it...and he told us that "around the time you guys are getting your drivers licenses, it will be finished."

Well hell if he wasn't right. Union Station reopened in July of 2000, the same year I got my license.

Admittedly, I got my license late, but the fact remains that for a public works project to remain within two years of its planned completion date is not to damn bad. I've been thinking a lot about the Union Station guy, whoever he was, in recent days with the Big Dig accident.

The thing with public works is that lots of crap is going to go wrong. There's nothing you can do about it, there's no special technique to make everything go right. The thing you have to do is keep an eye on HOW things are going wrong and do what you can to divert the quota of screwups into small, inconsequential things, i.e. manage things so that the workers can't install the wrong cabling system, but they can screw up by having random backhoes arrive in the wrong locations. To do that you have to have someone - the bigger the project, the more someones - on the ground, constantly, whenever work is going on, just so they KNOW when something happens. When a huge piece of concrete falls off the machine carrying it, they'll know. When people are finishing installations way to quickly, they'll know. And from knowing, they can inspect the situation and remedy it, and that's what keeps public works from being public humiliations.

I was in my sophomore year of college when I met a chick from North Dakota who knew about the Big Dig. Her Dad was really into stuff like that - big machines, building bridges, digging giant holes, constructin' stuff, all that jazz. Right now, her dad is probably cracking up over the discovery that the 90 West connector is even worse than the 90 East one, from which a panel fell out and killed someone. He's probably laughing even harder because of the political maneuvering going on. This goes back to political machines, and pulls in unions. The reason machines failed was that they stopped being about doing something and became more about the raw BEING of being in power. Machines came to power because they did something solid for the citizens they more or less owned - kept an eye on them, took care of them, pulled them up when they needed it. It wasn't always legal, but the exception was allowed to stand because there was a benefit to everyone in some way. When that benefit decreased in the interest of increased luxury for the elite, the system broke down and stopped working. The same thing happens with unions - they are fantastic when they assure you that you have hired or partnered with a skilled, bonded group of people, but fail when the work is slow, unfinished, shoddily done. This is the issue here - the "shit happens" aspect of the Big Dig was allowed to cover too many screwups, and the work was crap.

Now, again in the interest of the whole story - I do not like Matt Amorello. This has nothing to do with his job in his current position, but instead with what I saw of him in his run against Jim McGovern in 1998. Even in middle school, early in my political lifetime, I could feel that Amorello was running not for the chance to make a difference, not to have his thoughts heard, not to help people in the 3rd District, but because he wanted to be amidst the fraternity of it all. It's fine to want that, but you have to balance it with wanting to do something with your position, for my respect at least. He seemed slimy to me, seemed less than caring, seemed not quite into it for the right reasons. It made me dislike him pretty quickly, especially in comparison to McGovern.

Le sigh.

At least it's the weekend. I am having dissatisfaction with my Amazon Wish List - not because it's not awesome, because I love Amazon - but because I am thinking about how I can't afford all the books I want, and then I think "well, I'll just go to the library," but if I do THAT, then I won't HAVE the book, and once I read a book I feel like the people and places and stories in it are mine and I want to have them so I can go back and hang out with them whenever I want. I wish I could buy all the books in the world so I could read them whenever I wanted.

The Seven Deadly Sins, But Mostly Greed.

On NPR this morning, they did an interview with Nicole Buffett, who is an artist in San Francisco and Warren Buffett's granddaughter. She sounds like a very cool chick, and I am delighted to have done a search for her and found that she's this very pretty woman with dreads and great jewelry. Rock on, Nicole Buffett. But even more than that, she was incredibly awesome about her grandfather's donation of THIRTY SEVEN BILLION DOLLARS to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. When pushed, again and again to come out and say she was pissed that the money had gone to charity instead of family, she stuck with what I think she truly means - that she think it's the way her grandmother would have wanted it, and she's glad it's going to a good cause. The thing that bothered me about the interview was that the interviewer kept pushing and pushing the issue, making it seem like the money was Nicole's and her parents' and relatives, and there was something unfair about it going to the Gates Foundation. Does anyone else find that weird? It's Warren Buffett's money. That he earned. That he can do whatever the hell he wants to with. If he came out and said he wanted to donate his $37 billion to redesigning the currency of Madagascar...that's his right. This whole hue and cry about how kee-razy it is that he's giving the bucks to charity and not his family really kind of creeps me out, because it's got the stink of that "my money is mine, all mine, and fuck all you people not as well off as me" air that has been so prevalent lately. It's an entitlement thing, and it creeps me out. He can do whatever he wants with it - I would hope that people who can would donate to charity in a really meaningful way, but the bottom line is, what business is it of NPR's or any of the rest of the media's to be practically drooling over the very idea of the Buffett fam flipping their shit like spoiled little children that the money isn't going to them? It's great to do what Buffett did. It's gross to have everyone in the world poking the rest of the family with a stick. Of course they're proud of him, because it rocks that he DOUBLED the money the Gates Foundation has to give, and I'm sure they are bummed out on some level, but leave them alone!

PS - Isn't it always kind of great when kids who should be completely spoiled and horrific come out kind of awesome? Like Nicole Buffet, for instance, or Don Jr. and IVANKA! Trump?

On a side note, if you don't know about the amazing stuff that the Gates Foundation does, take some time to toodle around their site and Google them. They do a ton (including working to raise the high school graduation rate), but a majority of it is supporting research and development in diseases where there isn't much money. I've said before, if not on this blog, on real life, that capitalism and competition in medicine is good because it pushes for endless innovation...but the problem is that the diseases that aren't big money makers - i.e. malaria in Africa, the ideal example for the Gates Foundation - get passed by, and development stagnates and ends. The Gates Foundation picks that stuff up and starts research again, and it's REALLY COOL STUFF! Check it out.

This whole thing, incidentally, has ruined my view of two women on the radio who I didn't necessarily list on my favorite female role models, but who didn't bother me. One was the reporter doing the interview with Nicole Buffett for being obnoxious about where the money should have gone. The other one was on WTAG yesterday, and the stupid was just falling out all over the place. She had this to share on the topic of the donation..."Melinda is really the mastermind behind the whole charity, did you know that? Hee hee....You gotta hand it to her, great marriage! He might not be much to look at, but man..." That's great. First you express surprise that a woman is in charge - it doesn't quite carry here, but that was the tone - like, way to prove you think women are capable, and then you tell us all about how you should marry for money and that's the only reason Melinda is with Bill. Way to out yourself as shallow and a shitty role model. I suppose it goes without saying that she went on to embarass herself while talking about sports shortly thereafter. Note to Girls Who Fake It: Guys will be impressed if you KNOW WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT. Faking an interest is just straight up irritating.

What do I need to do to get a hardcore female role model up in here? If Nancy Pelosi would just sack up and get the Dems in shape, we could be on the right path. Angelina Jolie is a great candidate...but no one cares. Too pretty. Le sigh.

Oh, and my irrational love for Pink continues, not only because for some reason she thought it would be a hot plan to refer to herself as "trisexual" but for her latest song, "Stupid Girls."

The Math of the Past Few Weeks

{[(25 years for Mom and Dad + 4 replaced piano strings)*905 miles/17 feet of U-Haul]*1 first day of summer}^10 days = HOLY CRAP AM I TIRED + 1 movie about crosswords I will have to see sometime this week = maybe a little less tired but more in love with Will Shortz, Jon Stewart and Bill Clinton than before. Not Mike Mussina though.

So, June was a busy month, which is pretty much status quo for most people. Lots of weddings (none this year for me, but one year anniversary for Spinnaker and Anna Karenina, yay!), graduations, sunny days to play hooky on (not really any of those either...THANKS, rain) and all that good stuff.

The Aloha Chica graduated, which was great. Tahanto finally figured out the concept of renting a tent to put over the field hockey field for graduation...the gym is a fairly unpleasant alternative, so the tent was great. Really nice music from Wicked sung at the end. Saw a bunch of teachers and of course Aloha Chica all over the place, but she had eight gazillion friends to take pictures with, so I boogied fairly quickly. And dude...EVERY PERSON IN MY GRADUATING CLASS had a sibling in this one, and I am not going to lie...not exactly lying awake nights aching to see all of them. I said the quick hellos, but I really....I loved Tahanto when I was there, but once you graduate and there are no classes to get through and no extracurriculars to look forward to, all that's left is a vaguely pleasant feeling of fun times had, and the insular, fishbowlesque everyone-up-in-everyone-else's-shit aspect of Tahanto, and that was the one thing that I really did not dig. But I got out of there fairly quickly - too quickly in some cases, but for every action, there's a reaction, and every person I stayed to chat with cost a person finding me who I didn't want to chat with. Very nice ceremony though (excepting the superintendent's speech, which both bored the everloving shit out of me and made me weep for the MCAS-infused future where people are going to be teaching nothing but statistics. Gag. "Millennials" my ass.) She is going to Arcadia, near Philly, and she is going to have a BLAST. She'll also be near an outpost of Mom's side of the fam (and not so far from the NJ Dad's Side outpost either, really), so that will be nice.

On the 10th, Aloha had a grad party at the Homestead, and pre-party, Speed and I went to the nursery that had sent us a 20% off coupon and bought some rhododendrons, plants, and the Most Perfect Wisteria Tree in the World. Our front yard looks like a front yard now! All this week (6/19-6/23) Speed has been KICKING ASS in the yard...wrangling rhododendrons and azaleas and all that good stuff. He rocks.

I was going to skip ahead, but I figure it will make more sense to go weekend-by-weekend. So on the 17th, I flew to Columbia and picked up the fortepiano. Between this and the last entry I wrote, here's what happened. I continued to not hear from Sir Mortimer, to the point of getting eight different kinds of neurotic and cranky, so Speed finally emailed him from his work email, and pitched him a number. Within 20 minutes, Speed had heard back from him, saying he hadn't gotten my emails, etc., etc., etc. He accepted the offer and we had to make travel arrangements, etc.

Exception to the chronology rule: Speed and I went down to Norristown, PA for a family reunion/memorial service May 13th and 14th just after Sir Mortimer had accepted our offer. It was really wonderful to be able to tell the family that it would be coming back to us, and to hear everyone talk about how musical the Mountain Man was. It was also a nice Intro to the Society of Friends for Speed, and he had lots of questions about that. It was a good environment to do it in, too, because not all of that side is comprised of practicing Quakers; in fact, most of them AREN'T. We drove down, and hit up the grandparents, and aunt and uncle in NJ on our way down - and Speed handled the family overload like a CHAMP. GO SPEED RACER, GO! Heh.

Okay, so I get to Logan for a 12:40 flight, and...my license has expired. Why I didn't get notification, I have no clue. I get sent to the Slowest Typer in the World, a US Airways employee, who takes so long to make me a selectee (JUST WRITE SOME S'S ON THE BOARDING PASS!!! DO YOU PEOPLE NOT HAVE PENS?!) that I miss my flight, and thus have a total nervous breakdown. I get on to one that will get me to Columbia Airport, a.k.a. the Most Relaxing and Pretty Little Airport On the Eastern Seaboard, only about an hour later. Fine. Call everyone, tell them what's up, fine. I get to CAE, terrify a taxi driver, and tell him the U-Haul place closes at 7 and I need to be there. It's about 6:30.

Now, who has spotted the issue with the U-Haul? That's right, my license.

Luckily, I got there so late that I think the U-Haul guy just wanted to go home, so he let me have the truck - a 17' truck, upgraded from the 10' truck I had requested. What I REALLY would have liked was one of those vans they have, but those are only for in-town moves. BOO! So, I head over to Sir Mortimer's, meet up with the movers, they rock it out and move the piano into the back of the truck, and bob's your uncle, Sir Mortimer and I are having a cup of tea and some parmesan ice cream (actually good, rather than nasty) and talkin' fortepiano. Really nice guy, BEAUTIFUL house, great. Go to hotel, become unconcious until 6 am.

I got on the road at about 6:30, and let me tell you, it is a long way from South Carolina to Massachusetts. Per Mapquest, whose directions I followed even though they included going through New York via 95 North, and FOR GOD'S SAKE PEOPLE I KNOW! it was 905.71 miles from my hotel to Holden, give or take a few miles for fueling of the body and truck. Listened to a lot of NPR, called Speed and various family members to check in (and bitch about drivers, road signs, et al.), came up with a lot of entertaining scenarios involving Jill and smackdowns of the verbal and physical variety, etc. I rolled in at 3 am, where Speed was waiting, and although we'd planned to move it in that night, we established that I didn't need to get back the U-Haul until mid-week so we said "ehhhh, no" and went to bed.

We moved the fortepiano inside on Tuesday the 20th, with the help of Ma and Tom Sawyer, and gave it a good dose of Old English and had it tuned on the 24th, which was also...

Mom and Dad's 25th anniversary party! Yay! SO COOL! That was over at my place, and lots of folks came. Not sure where Superfly and Aloha Chica were, but everyone had a blast anyway, and Tom Sawyer wound up giving us his grill! Sweet! I gave Speed his birthday present early, in hopes that it would come in useful this weekend (it was rainy, and I got him a cabana we'd been eyeballing), but we wound up jut taking shelter under the roof overhang.

So, it's been a bit exhausting, but fun. Had a really great day just hanging out with Speed and relaxing for the first time in a while yesterday, which was nice. I am so lucky to have him.

Let Me Tell You About the Best TV Show in the World.

So, I enjoy TV. I watch a fair amount of reality TV, incuding The People's Court, and assorted other shows. Up to this point, I probably would have dubbed The Apprentice my favorite show. But then I went to Philadelphia with Speed, and I discovered something fantastic.

Something groundbreaking.

Something on late at night.

No, not that something.

Something manned by a hipster.

Something...called Cheaters.

First of all, Cheaters believes in charity, and in giving people chances, and I know this because the graphics on the show are clearly designed by monkeys who just graduated from online graphics arts schools. This is not a slam on graphics arts schools, online or other wise, or the people who attend them. What I am saying is that ACTUAL MONKEYS who went to an online graphics arts school quickly found their start at Cheaters, where they promptly layered EVERY screen with eight times the amount of overlay and color and movement required. Further evidence of charity and kindness can be found in the introductory screen that explains that Cheaters is dedicated to the faithful, and goes on to exhort the UNfaithful to reexamine their lives and decisions. Fantastic.

The rest of the staff of Cheaters is comprised of the A-Team and the most awesome TV show host in the world, Joey Greco. Joey Greco cares. He cares about YOU. And he got SHANKED ON NATIONAL TV. That's right, shanked. ON A BOAT. He has a very new-age hipster-yuppie hybrid look, and a soul patch that has the most immaculate grooming I have ever seen on something that is probably comprised of less than 25 hairs. Black outfits, salt and mostly pepper hair, soothing voice, full range of "I am showing concern" facial expressions...this man was made for this job. The key aspect, however, is the undercurrent of shit-stirring tendencies. And this is where it gets awesome.

The show opens with Joey describing the case. Cheaters is apparently a detective agency - whether or not it existed before the show, I don't know. Remember when spy movies were REALLY in, like...three to one, spy movie releases to ALL other releases? And you know the graphics? Where they zoom in with the little crosshair binoculars and there's excessive use of nightvision and all that? Any graphics I mention from here on in are like that, only if you came up with them when you were in your adolescence and kind of went overboard with everything. So Joey's explaining the case, and there's a little dossier graphic where the person is describing why they think their significant other is cheating in one corner of the screen and their age and occupation are listed on the other side. The bottom is taken up by a summary of the case that's apparently written by The People's Court's Voice of Condemnation ("He's accused of....taking a friend to the cleaners."). The clients are generally comprised of the "classy" echelon of Jerry Springer guests, and about half of them are unemployed.

The Cheaters folks then trail the suspected cheater, taking pictures and video. There is always a recorded phone call between the client and the cheater where the cheater lies to the client all "I'm just staying late at work." This portion of the show is peppered with more awesome graphics, including night vision shots and quasi-dossier screens. The best thing is the commentary, some of which I will transcribe below. These people should be writing soap operas, is my point. And then, Joey meets up with the client, usually somewhere sort of strange like a parking lot. He shows the client the (beatiful bean) footage, which often includes tape as caught by hidden cameras of the cheater having sex, which raises a variety of questions as to whether or not it's legal to be showing people porn in random parking lots. I'm guessing not.

Then...the confrontation. Oh yes. Joey then gets VERY excited and I AM A SPY about the whole thing, and the A-Team, comprised of a small army of cameramen and security, drives Joey and the client to where the cheater is with the Other Woman/Man RIGHT NOW! They leap out, and what happens, basically, is Jerry Springer. There's yelling and shrieking and hitting and freaking out and menacing, and it's all INCREDIBLY awesome, because after the intitial bout of accusations/curses/interrogation, Joey starts stirring the shit. "Why are you doing this? Can't you just talk to her? Give her the answers she deserves. Don't you think she deserves that?" More or less running through the list of every question you are totally not willing to deal with from someone who just showed up with the person you're cheating on and stole your juice in front of the person you were cheating with. This, obviously, is what got our hero shanked on a boat. They did the confrontation on the boat, and the cheater got pissed about the juice-stealing and flipped out and stabbed Joey with some sort of fish-gutting knife after sending a member of the A-Team over the side of the boat. Awesome!

Cheaters is on at 11:30 on the WB.

You can thank me later.

Quickie

http://nodogsonbeach.livejournal.com/89434.html Good article but extremely NSFW text (profanity).


Had a good weekend, more on that later.