Happy Trails

In the past year and a half, I've written 150 posts that have averaged about two pages each, or roughly 300 typed pages. I began Lazlo's Lament as an accidental blogger and then discovered I enjoyed the short writing exercises and keeping some of you entertained some of the time. Even the name was a bit of a whim because I didn't expect to still be at this 18 months later.

Writing Lazlo's Lament has been a joy and a challenge as I tried to entertain you all and, I suspect, entertain myself. It's also been a bit of a chore because at some point you come to realize that people are reading what passes for this modern-day mass communication, and you feel compelled to write good (or is it well?) As Sladed will attest, we vanity bloggers find that everything happening around us becomes a trigger for that all-illusive content and that this process becomes seductive and addictive, leaving too many brain cells tied up in this undertaking for our own good.

I suspect the blank sheet of paper that we stare at when we have a good idea carries the same feeling I used to get when I was feverishly writing my novel and wondering where my story was taking me next and how I would find the right mix of prose to make the journey worthwhile. At this moment, I don't know where my novel is, let alone where it's going. But I need to find out, and there is a big part of me that wonders where it would be now if I had invested those same 300 pages and edits into my novel.

For those who may have heard at one point or another, I have written more than 400 pages of my novel; some in great need of editing, some not half-bad. If you also know me, you are aware that I have a terrible history of completing things. From musical instruments to foreign languages to sports, I have started them all and mastered none. At 50-years-old, perhaps this is a good time to see if I can complete something I started and learn what it feels like to be satisfied when I have finished, even if it is only on my terms.

So, to completely bury the lead, I won't be posting to this site for a while as I take whatever energy has gone into writing this nonsense and put it toward completing something that has been a lifelong dream: a novel. Wish me luck and thank you for all your kind thoughts, your complaints, your reasoned debate and, hopefully, for a laugh or two. Be well.

It's Friggin' Cold

As a reprieve from the vigorous debate on my last post on global warming and Iraq, I offer this post on – global warming. Or should I discuss global cooling because, damn, is it cold.

It was minus 2 degrees in Minneapolis where I switched planes and had to wait far too long to get off the jetway and on the plane. In Virginia, it’s 21 degrees and snowing. We need a patch of global warming and we need it now.

The snow is fluffy and white and beautiful, but I will likely end up skidding on ice and sail into a snow drift. The good news, I know what to do if I end up in a snow drift: stay with the car. The bad news is nobody is coming. I could call AAA and they will commend me for staying with the car, but I think they do that so they will no where to find the body once the snow melts. As good a company as AAA is, the only difference between them and any other towing service is, while neither will come out in this weather to extricate me from a snow drift, at least AAA won’t charge me.

It's pretty cold inside my Virginia Estates too and this is saying something because usually it’s 80 degrees inside when it 20 degrees outside. It’s so cold I considered backing the car up and sticking the exhaust pipe in the window to keep it warmer in the bedroom. My plan was foiled when the engine block froze.

In the end, it is better to stay inside rather than drive in this weather. I know the kids used to long for storms like this because it meant that the weather was bad enough to cancel school but, ironically, not bad enough to meet up with their friends and go sledding. What the kids may not have known was that we parents longed for the same kind of day because we didn’t really feel like going into work either. And this brings me to my marketing suggestion for AAA. Rather than fish us out for bad driving in bad weather, they should come to our house, make us a lunch and give us a few drinks, wrap our legs in a warm blanket, turn on the television and tell us not to go anywhere. Now this would be a service worth paying the big bucks for.

He's Not Dead Yet

In a tribute to the Black Plague that only Monty Python can do, there is a scene in the movie Monty Python and The Holy Grail where a guy is pulling a wagon through the streets of a town yelling, “Bring out your dead.” The wagon is heaped with dead people. A short while later, a man puts his father on the wagon and the father is obviously not dead. The father complains, saying, “I’m not dead yet.”

This is kind of how our dog Mutties must have felt last week. Weak and feeble, it looked like it was the end for our 17-year-old cocker spaniel. He couldn’t raise his head very well, he had a vacant look and worse, he refused something to eat even when delicately handed to him. For those who know Mutties, there is never a moment when he won’t eat something.

So the family was in seclusion last week trying to reach a consensus about what to do and what would be most fair to him. None of us wanted him to suffer even a little bit. On Friday he was worse than he had been the night before. He was shivering and unable to move. I called the family and said it was likely time we let The Vet and not The Lord take him. All were in sad agreement. Even the Boy gave him a plug on his blog, Gonewandering.

On a whim I decided to give him a Johnsonville Polish Brat and he gobbled it down with vigor. He then stood up and slowly walked to the toilet to drink some refreshing water, walked outside to do his business – both varieties, and then went back to sleep with a comfortable look about him.

The day before he was practically praying about his crucifixion (the only thing it could be for such a god-like creature) in the Garden of Gethsemane and the next day, thanks to a Polish sausage and holy water, he was alive and kicking. It is now Sunday and he is doing even better. Koala Bears have suggested it was all in the water. Maybe so, but we’re happily off the death watch for the moment.

By the way, if you decide to buy the Monty Python movie or any book or movie, for that matter, go through the Sladed Blog so he gets some extra money and will prove to me that I can make a buck or two ogg this blogging thing.

Special thoughts go out to Italiphil who is desperately trying to save his wonderful Scottie dog Annie. Annie has poor kidney function but, hopefully, is young and strong enough to pull out of this.

Media Hysteria

There seems to be a passion among journalists to label things. Lately there have been two mantras coming from the chattering class.

For the past year, there has been one story or another about one scientists or organization proclaiming there is global warming. Lately there has been a slight modification and the word “manmade” has been added to the headline.

The other has been a year-long discussion about whether or not there is a “civil war” in Iraq, as if this definition changes anything for the average Iraqi or affects our forces in the battlefield.

For the sake of greater economy for future headline writers, let’s stipulate two points to the media so it can move on to other hysterias: there is global warming and it is a civil war in Iraq. Now there is no more need for breathless headlines and interviews to support the media’s new cause celeb. Anymore stories or headlines trying to further define these issues will seem like beating a dead horse (although speaking of beating dead horses, they could write more on Barbaro and give us more intimate details beyond what his last meal was – grass, as the shocking truth turns out).

Having offered permission for the media to move on it should now be a bit scary for them. Now they can’t offer the opinion of others to manufacture a story. They should write about the solutions and the impact of those solutions on their subscriber base. And this is where it gets tricky.

If we sign on to Kyoto or even go so far as to all agree that we are in the midst of manmade global warming, what are we to do? Ride our bikes to work? Stop using air conditioning? Shut down all carbon burning power plants (i.e. most power plants), plant a billion new trees or close down most manufacturing facilities and re-deploy the displaced workforce? At the same time, give China and India a free pass because, you know, they are developing and need to engage in a little bit of global warming to take their people out of poverty, right?

In Iraq, so what if there is a civil war? This is a distinction without a difference. There was one going on before W. was out of high school and, as it happens, it pitted the Sunnis against the Shiites. This really shouldn’t surprise anyone in the media because they were covering this story back then, too. The difference this time is the Sunnis are in the minority and don’t have control of as many guns. They do seem to have a strong willingness to blow themselves up, so they have that going for them.

Let the media discuss the solution on this one, too. We could leave Iraq and Afgahnistan (where is the body count on Afghanistan, by the way) and just let them kill each other, and then the media could write headlines discussing the humanitarian and genocidal problems in the region. We could stay and put our men and women in harm’s way and have more stories about supporting the troops but not the mission. We could also take the gloves off and put a quicker end to the violence, but that would smell like victory and there is already too much vested in defeat.

Of course the main thing the media can do is stop listening to the democrats who believe they have an anti-war mandate from November’s elections (despite having to win with pro-war candidates) and ignore their enabling republicans who say the war is lost and we need our troops home in six months. First, if the war is really lost, why wait six months? Bring them home now and don’t allow another troop to die or be injured.

Absent that, do the media and those who seek their coverage have any understanding that the rise in sectarian violence – sorry, civil war – has much to do with their call to get the U.S. out the Viet Nam “quagmire?” Really, if you were a terrorits and wanted the Americans out of Iraq and understood the whim of the American public that no longer has the stomach for a body bag on television, what would you do to turn up the pressure? Increase the violence and cause gasps among the body politic, or take a nap while the U.S. undergoes this debate? The hundreds killed in recent weeks has given us the answer to this question. Perhaps those in the media could check their hands to see if they can find any blood on them.

Help! My Wife Is Trying To Keep Me Alive! (Updated)

The comedian turned actor Denis Leary used to tell a joke about busy-bodies complaining he smoked too much. They would tell him, “You’re taking 10 years off your life,” and he would respond, “Yeah, but they’re the worst 10 years.”

In a way, that’s how I feel. Mrs. Laz, with good intention, has been quietly and regularly replacing food that is bad for me with food that is good for me.

First it was the salt. She poured out all that tasty Morton Salt, good for meat curing, with sea salt or some other light salt that requires three times the amount just to get the tongue tingling. From there she purchased something called egg substitutes to replace all the cholesterol I was getting in regular eggs. Do they make chicken substitutes?

Butter was too good for me and soon it was replaced by margarine and then light margarine, which was replaced by canola margarine and then something that only shared the color yellow with the original butter. I just have my toast dry now since the supposedly good stuff doesn’t melt or spread too well.

Next she read somewhere that we need fiber in our diet. Now everything in our house has enough fiber in it to back up the average elephant for months. Wheat tortillas, wheat hot dog buns, wheat spaghetti noodles, wheat flour, 400 grain sprouted wheat bread and even extra high fiber wheat oatmeal – sugar free of course. All these foods may have a ton of fiber but they taste like cardboard which, I assume, has plenty of fiber too.

She has even tried to fool me on the sweets she hides. She's switched out the delicious milk chocolate M&Ms with less tasty, but better for me, dark chocolate M&Ms and it's gotten to the point where I don't even want to search her hiding places anymore (but the bag is on the last shelf of the nook cabinets).

I asked the obvious, “Can we eat like we used to and just take vitamins?” No, we have to eat food that is good for us and I’m afraid I will end up having to live out those last ten, crummy years after all.

UPDATE: I found the new hiding place for the crummy M&Ms. They were in the second oven that we never use; although we could have. Anyway, many are in my tummy now making a harmonious yummmmmm sound. Also, I forgot to mention cheese. Mrs. Laz buys low-fat cheese for me and that pretty much removes the reason to have cheese in the first place. Cheese is basically mucus anyway, but it shouldn't taste like that. Thought you would all like to know.

What To Do

Talk about your mixed messages. President Bush takes a stand to oust Saddam Hussein, in part on sketchy intelligence and in part on removing a homicidal madman before he kills more innocents. Six months before the president decides to rid Iraq of Hussein, he follows the wishes of Congress and gets a vote to authorize regime change, which was really a re-authorization from a 1998 vote giving President Clinton the authority to do the same. Congress caught a whiff of public sentiment in late 2002 – just before the election, very cruel – and voted overwhelmingly to pass the “Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution.”

One would guess President Bush took Congress seriously back then, if for no other reason than the resolution passed 296-133 in the House and 77-23 in the Senate. From that point on, the debate has raged on a number of issues such as the quality of the intelligence, the number of troops that were used and the presence of a real plan for occupation following Saddam’s removal. This debate has become pointless and stale unless you’re running for higher office. However, the debate is instructional for what a future president should do when faced with the changing whim of the public and the predictable change in mood from politicians seeking their votes.

Case in point is the situation in Darfur. To get a good feel for this, look at this website imploring President Bush to stop the killing. It essentially asks him to do what we did in Iraq in 1992, including the not-so-well hidden request for armed troops. This is rich. To many, President Bush in particular and America in general represents much of what is evil in the world. This because we are occupiers, bullies and are intent on policing the world; or, put another way, just what the do-gooders are requesting we do to save those in need in Darfur.

Boiled down, what is happening in Darfur is what is occurring in Iraq: sectarian violence between different religious groups. Unless I am confused, the current attitude is that we are all against interfering or causing an increase in sectarian violence and putting our men and women in harms way to attempt to put an end to it.

We tried to help out in Somalia based in large part by a series of CNN news reports about petty warlords stealing food from starving refugees caught up in sectarian violence. The humanitarian crisis was in our living rooms so much that President Bush (41) decided to send troops to help distribute the food. Shortly thereafter, something quite different was broadcast into our living rooms by CNN; that of dead American troops being carried through the streets of Mogadishu. Public opinion was high to save the starving but reached rock bottom when the public learned there was a price to pay for our doing so. President Clinton, always driven by polls on major decisions, removed the troops, which also removed the last doubt by Osama bin Laden that the U.S. was nothing more than a Paper Tiger.

And now Darfur. What should President Bush do? What should a future president do since it is unlikely the warring factions will have gone through all 2.5 million people of Darfur by 2008? Inquiring minds and arm-chair quarterbacks are waiting.

A Short, But Eventful, Comedy Career

So I was going to finish regaling you all on my brief moment as a comedic genius. In 1977 I was a pretty big deal in the world of unpaid comedy writers. I had sheets and sheets of worthless and unwanted jokes. But, you know, I was writing ahead of my time and for future appreciation. Besides, my jokes always got a few yucks from my mother.

While I was doing the sketch comedy work for the Laughing Stock Company (see below) I placed an ad in the Daily Variety offering my irreverent comedy writing for A List stand-up comics. Days, weeks and then months went by with no calls from the A List, soon followed by the B and C Lists. Just as I was getting discouraged I got a call from someone on the D+ List, which just happened to be my college grade point average at the time, a curious bit of symmetry, wouldn’t you say?

The caller had just been released from the hospital and wanted some new material to re-launch his fading career. I was just the guy to do it and, as he told me, was also the most economical in my pricing at $100 per minute. I know what you’re thinking; $100 per minute seems like a lot. But it’s $100 per minute of joke telling or, to put it in perspective, one double-spaced typed sheet of paper. It’s not really that easy to write original funny stuff and this guy wanted three minutes.

We met at a really, really nice McDonalds in a seedy side of Hollywood. He was, to put it nicely, a bit strange. He made crude comments, loudly, about the anatomy of the minimum wage staff behind the counter and seemed to lack a sense of humor, which, as it happens, is an unhelpful attribute for a comedian. I was given the type of comedy he preferred and it was a bit broad for my taste. He simply said, “Write me something funny.”

I went back to my dorm room where I would write comedy amidst the four-month-old pizza crusts and sweat socks that had not been washed during an entire semester. As a quick aside, my roommate and I won a dorm award for filthiest room, with a lot of competition I might add.

I toiled and paced and lay awake at night rolling jokes around in my head instead of remembering I had a Biology of Cancer mid-term the next day. Of course who needs to fulfill a life science requirement when you’re helping a guy re-launch a fading career?

Several days later I felt I had enough material to present to my new client. Also it looked like I was going to be asked to leave UCLA and never return so I needed a career alternative. I met the comedian at the same McDonalds and I noticed he had brought with him a pair of scissors and a ruler. He carefully went through my work and did not so much as smile as he read. A bad sign, I thought.

After reading, he pulled out the scissors and began to meticulously cut sentences and paragraphs out of what I had written and placed the remainder on a separate page. He did this for each of the three and a half pages I had given him. When he was done, he measured what was left and it came to something like 2.45 pages, or minutes, and offered me $245 for my remaining work. He then invited me to watch him perform my material the following Saturday, which I excitedly accepted.

The club that would be the scene of his career re-launch was called Jon’s Place in Hollywood and was literally owned by a Safeway baggage clerk. Apparently Jon was doing better bagging groceries than he was as a club owner or comic. Jon didn’t pay any of the comedians so it became known as a place to safely try out new material instead of a top-notch comedy club.

I remember the first act. A guy was dressed in a too-small gray suit and red bow tie and was with a girl who looked like an adult Raggedy Ann Doll. Their entire act was taking things out of a trunk, holding them in the air, and screaming. To this day, I swear the guy in the bow tie was Pee Wee Herman, but who knows?

Soon my guy came on stage. He was given three minutes to perform as Jon kept a pretty tight schedule. He had taken an egg timer with him and placed it on the stool in front of him. This got a few chuckles as he explained the purpose. He begins on my first joke and he is delivering the lines perfectly; just as they were written. “Yes!” I was thinking to myself, you don’t just “tell” a joke, you “sell” a joke.

I was beaming with pride as he was re-launching his career and launching me, a rising star in the world of comedy. The punchline was just around the corner when he stumbled and then stopped. He scratched his head, shrugged and said, “I forgot the punchline.” The audience, which likely included other baggage clerks and Jon’s mother, got a laugh out of this. I guess it’s pretty funny to get close to the punch lunch and then forget it. That is, if part of the joke is forgetting the punchline. The good news was, however, that only my soon-to-be-re-fading comic and I knew there was supposed to be a punchline.

He then went into the next joke and was moving along pretty well with it until he stumbled, scratched his head and then told the audience he had once again forgotten the punchline. This admission got no laughs. In fact it got Jon off his feet to put an end to the act. I guess two people dressed like idiots, grabbing things out of a trunk and yelling at them isn’t offensive, but a forgetful comic is.

I was beginning to bury my head in my hands when the comic decided to announce that his writer was in the audience and pointed directly at me. I was outed as the bad joke writer right in the middle of other fading comics and union super market workers. There was no place to hide and all I could do was wave at the hostile audience.

I decided it was best to leave and nodded for the comic to follow me out the door and back into obscurity. I asked what happened, how could he forget the punchlines? At that moment I learned I should have asked him why he was in the hospital. It turns out he had undergone surgery to remove brain tumors and one of the byproducts of such surgery is memory loss. I wish I had asked earlier because I could have done a bit about a forgetful comedian. Now that would have been funny!

I've Been Replaced!

Woody Allen used to tell a story about his father becoming “technologically unemployed.” The company he worked for created a machine that could do everything he could do, only better. The sad part was, his wife bought one too.

That pretty much sums up how I feel. I made the mistake of buying Mrs. Laz a little puppy named Missy as a Christmas present, and now I have been replaced. And not just replaced in the essential areas of love and affection, but the damned little four-pound home-wrecker sleeps where I used to.

I like cute puppies and cute kittens, I really do. But answer these questions: can the dog take you out for dinner, keep a job, fulfill the warmer moments of human compassion, not be afraid of vacuum cleaners, or do things that require opposable thumbs? I think not.

I am thinking larcenous thoughts about the both of them. As the Wicked Witch screeched: “The last to go will see the first three go before her. And her little dog too.”

The Power Of Positive Drinking

I had most of a good bottle of wine the other day and, along with reading and viewing supplied by Mrs. Laz, The Boy and my CFO, I have decided to ad another New Year’s resolution. To whit: I resolve to think positively about my life, to embrace the good that has come my way and to ask for and expect more nifty things in the future. I realize that I have been far too negative and pouty about a number of frivolous things and it’s far better to shake the negative thoughts than to dwell on them. Just thought you all should know. And I think I should also resolve to go to bed sooner as it's 2:39 a.m. as of this post.

An Old Part Of Me

Have you ever had something akin to “missing time” with certain friends; some blank space when you and your friend were on different tracks? Talking to Italiphil over the New Year, I realized there was almost a decade when we were not as close, didn’t speak as often and therefore lost track of important parts of each of our lives. I wish I had been there with him because, if anything, I am a curious person and just want to fill in the gaps of what I know about him.

I have been out visiting our Virginia estates and was telling a story to an old friend and it occurred to me that there are perhaps equal mysteries of my past to my friends both old and new. So here is a chunk of my life you may not be aware of.

When I went to the “Other College in Los Angeles” I had a huge interest in being a writer of anything – films, books and especially sketch comedy. Saturday Night Live was in its second season and the writers were really engaged in breakthrough comedy. Like any aspiring Hollywood-type I bought the Daily Variety and constantly read the help wanted section, searching in vain for that one ad seeking a network president, no experience necessary.

One day I saw an ad seeking writers for a comedy group and I immediately called and got an appointment with the director of the group named Ernie. Ernie was an old NBC vice president and had earned his stripes producing Martin and Lewis movies including the Nutty Professor. He had recently left NBC after producing the short-lived second incarnation of Laugh-In in which he discovered Robin Williams who had been a member of the group I was trying to get in.

Ernie told me the position was more of a writing school than a paying job, but if I wrote well and the group could book some shows, I could share in the revenue. Oh, and in the meantime, I could pay him $15 per week for his writing advice. It still sounded good to me so I gave him some writing samples and he particularly liked one that was influenced by Woody Allen, my favorite comedian at the time. Since Ernie favored old Catskill-style comedy, he decided to “take a risk on me” but said, “Don’t give me any of that Saturday Night Live stuff.”

I wrote a number of sketches that I really only remember the titles of now: “For The Halibut,” “Close Luncheon Counters of the Third Kind” and one called “The Detestable Debutante” which was about a snotty rose who looked down on the weeds around her until she was yanked out of the ground and sold to a debutante – it was a real think piece.

We were constantly approached by comedians that Ernie knew to write stand-up material and some came to our weekly sessions to brainstorm. One who came was a very young Gary Shandling who brought a guy named Teddy Bergman with him. Bergman was impressive because he was the producer of Three’s Company at the time, and Shandling looked the part of the future star with perfect Seventies no-pocket pants, coifed hair and a leather clutch purse. We tried to dazzle him but apparently to no avail.

Another comedian we pitched was Bob Saget who was only 20-years-old at the time. Despite the fact he sold out later and did America’s Funniest Home Videos and Full House, Saget was one of the funniest comics I had every seen. He used to pick on his audience in such a clever way, and I remember a bit in which he played “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” on his guitar that was, well, weeping, as he had rigged water to drop off. Perhaps you had to be there to find that one funny.

Our group was called the Laughing Stock Company and we did do several shows and I even got paid more than $25 a few times. Ernie later organized a group of older comics called Go Like Sixty and it enjoyed pretty good success doing Catskill comedy until Ernie died a few years later.

Ernie was a part of old Hollywood that dined at the Brown Derby and somehow kept their undergarments on while getting out of cars. He knew all the old stars in town and had numerous stories and maybe I will do another post about them someday. Ernie’s connection to these “stars” drew the curiosity of one of my co-writers. Eventually the co-writer became my co-conspirator and we would take turns asking for a bathroom break. Instead of following through on our original intent, we snuck into Ernie’s office, opened up his address book and wrote down private numbers of stars like Bob Hope, Jonathan Winters, Jerry Lewis, and Dick Martin. We never called any of them but we felt pretty cool having them in our own address book.

I should take that last part back. I did use Bob Hope and Jerry Lewis as references on a job application to be a waiter, figuring they would never have the guts to call these guys. However, I overestimated the intelligence of an assistant manager at a Bob’s Big Boy who never made the connection to the people he had on the other line who were wondering who this Mike guy was. I got the job, though, once again further demonstrating the level of intelligence of my new boss.

This is getting a bit long so I will write another post about my Big Time entry into the world of comedy writing on another day. Maybe some of you could share some old secrets about yourself too.

Sympathy For The Devil

There must be something inherently human about feeling uncomfortable to witness the death of anyone. And so it is entirely justifiable for many of us to have felt trepidation about the execution of Saddam Hussein. This isn’t to say a majority of people don’t believe he got what he deserved; it’s just that we don’t want our Humanity to get lost in the impulse for revenge.

This may surprise a few, but I don’t believe in the death penalty. It’s based on the notion that planning an execution is a cousin to a planned murder. Most people believe the Ten Commandments include the principle, “Thou shalt not kill,” but it actually says, “Thou shalt not murder” and I have trouble getting around the idea that mankind arranging for the killing of another isn’t a violation of the founding tenets of our society.

Having said that (or, better, written that), Saddam was not executed based on Western values, but on Islamic law and the Iraqi society. I have less trouble with Saddam’s demise based on who carried it out and the reasons for it. There were few despots more brutal to his own people than Saddam. In modern terms, Saddam gets a seat at the same table with Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot and Mao. He may have been moving toward the head seat if his regime had not been stopped.

Americans generated a certain amount of sympathy for Saddam as he walked his final steps, but Americans didn’t live under his terror and state-sponsored murder. The Iraqis did, however, and it’s doubtful our sensitivity to capital punishment means much to the Kurds who were bombed with mustard and sarin gas or the Shiites in the south of Iraq who were systematically rounded up, murdered and shoved into mass graves – all by his orders and approval. By most estimates, more than 1 million Iraqis were killed under Saddam and another 1 million in his war with Iran. To the surviving families and friends of the disappeared, Saddam’s public execution was naturally welcomed, Western concerns notwithstanding.

Another Trip Around The Sun

When he was younger, the Boy used to call the lies we tell ourselves we will accomplish in the upcoming year, “New Year’s Revolutions.” In a way he was accurate. The New Year represents a revolution around the sun, or, as Big Gus says, “Another trip around the sun.”

I used to keep my revolutions simple like, “I resolve to fly on my own,” or “I will date Diane Lane” -- things that have no chance of happening. By making such impossible goals, I knew I would fall short and be less disappointed going into the year, thereby lessening my disenchantment with more realistic hoped for accomplishments.

It’s another New Year and to keep the up the façade for yet another year, I will endeavor to share with you my revolutions for 2007. Please feel free to add your own or ridicule mine.

1. I resolve to lose 50 pounds. I have succeeded at this only once, but it always tops my list. This also means I will have to swim more or pick up a different exercise regiment.

2. I resolve to be more decisive. I think.

3. I resolve to travel less unless for fun and relaxation, although I am leaving for DC on Saturday.

4. I resolve to date Diane Lane. Why should this be considered such a difficult task?

5. I resolve to creatively beg for forgiveness from Mrs. Laz for the last comment.

6. I resolve to resolve where we should live without regard to who it upsets or makes happy.

7. I resolve to finish my novel or, in the interim, to write a new one since I am so tired of the old one.

8. It would be nifty if I could learn to speak French more fluently – something beyond first year high school French.

9. I have key business decisions to make early in the year and I resolve to make them using impassionate calculation rather than through indecision.

10. I hope to resolve all the unresolved issues in my life and to stop sweating all the small stuff.

Well, that’s it; neither really imaginative nor aggressive. It should be fun to look back at this next year and determine my grade. I always got Cs in the past, let’s see how I do.

Gerald and Me

In the spring of 1964 my family was headed in our 1964 Buick Riviera for a vacation to North Carolina. My dad, as usual, had the gas pedal to the floor and a single-minded purpose to make it as far as he could that night, three whining boys and their mother be-damned.

We made it to Cumberland, KY, which was not too bad since we didn’t leave from Grand Rapids until about 4 p.m. My dad also had a hidden agenda – to get to a motel in time to watch the Cassius Clay-Sonny Liston championship fight. My dad thought Clay was a loudmouth (decidedly true) and Liston a gentleman (also true), so his main interest was watching Liston de-pretty-fy Clay with a few well aimed left hooks.

When we arrived at the motel, we saw two cars with Michigan plates. Mrs. Laz and the kids accuse me of believing I live in a small world – thinking everyone looks familiar and under the illusion that I know everyone when I find out they’re from Michigan – but apparently my father had the same affliction. I remember him saying that the cars parked near our room looked familiar and because the license plates back then noted the county the car was from, he knew the other drivers were from the same general area, Kent County.

This gave my dad an idea. Why not knock on the door of the fellow Michiganders and introduce his family (and you think I have social assimilation problems)? I also believe my dad wanted to see if there were adult males in the room so he could watch the bout with those who could appreciate the sweet science of boxing. So he knocked on the door, which was answered by our Congressman, Gerald R. Ford, and his brother, a contractor in Michigan who my father worked with. We were invited to come in and watch the fight, won by Clay when Liston didn’t come out to begin the Seventh Round.

Watching the fight with such important people was one of my earliest memories (I was almost 7 years old). I have thought about that day a number of times as Ford moved up in the House leadership and then became a reluctant vice president and president. We were always proud of President Ford and there was a sign in my front yard that read: “Welcome to East Grand Rapids, home of President Gerald R. Ford.” I had illusions the sign would be amended to read, “and Laz,” but I didn’t fare as well as I hoped in the 1968 primaries, falling behind Pat Paulsen and Snoopy. They really had a stacked deck of candidates back then, didn’t they?

Peace On Earth

In the second half of the first decade of the new Millennium, there is a lot of crap going on. We’re a world at war – the kind with bombs and bullets and knives and hand grenades – and a clash between cultures not seen since a Millennium ago. We may be in the midst of global warming or global cooling but, either way, it’s bad for real estate prices, there’s anti-American sentiment around the world unless one gets to buy things priced by the dollar rather than the Pound or the Euro, and there is seemingly a rampant restlessness that has not been around since perhaps the Great Depression.

But for one slice in time this year, from December 15 for those who share Hanukkah, through December 25 for those who celebrate Christmas, until January 7 for my friends who observe the Orthodox Christmas, we forget about all the troubles on the outside. Instead we enter the homes of our family and friends with love and the warmth of human compassion. We share stories and gifts and, if I am really lucky this year (and the gifts are not based on prior behavior), I will be happy beyond the riches of avarice. Even if I don’t get the gifts I want and I get something completely useless, I will still have the gift of my lovely wife and adoring children by my side as they open their presents and get whatever it is their loving hearts desire, even though I won’t.

These kinds of nights always put me in a Christmas mood, and a giving mood at that. When I was a kid, I spent the evenings leading up to Christmas in Michigan’s wintry weather, transfixed by the colorful Christmas lights glowing against the powdery snow. In those moments of bliss, it was difficult to concentrate on the correct amounts of freezing water and small rocks to put in the snowball that was soon to be aimed at Mollie Barbachym for no other reason than I had a crush on her.

I often crawled between the presents under the Christmas tree and looked up to see the blinking lights and smell the fresh cut pine. There was the time I knocked the tree over but quick thinking allowed me to blame the cat. I don’t remember seeing that cat again but my presents didn’t vanish that year, I can report. Being a victim of circumstances like this can’t happen in the future because now we’re old and have a fake tree so no need to mistake the smell of plastic for pine.

So much of the holiday spirit comes from the traditions we establish as families. Since I was very young we have opened our presents on Christmas Eve instead of Christmas morning. This fine custom came about when I was about five years. My two brothers and I woke up at 4 a.m., certain that Santa had already left his loot. He had, in fact, displayed all the Christmas presents under the tree and we three brothers began to have the time of our lives playing with our new toys. I remember Peter got a Union uniform and I got a Confederate one despite the fact we both strongly sided with the Union. The buttons on the wool suit were a bit tricky so I sought help. I went to visit my parents who were soundly asleep. I figured they wouldn’t mind helping me out with the uniform that Santa had so carefully purchased, and it was now nearing 5 a.m. so they should have been getting up soon just to see what Santa had left. To my utter shock, my mother was quite unhappy that I had asked for help at that hour and she and my father bounded out of bed to see Bill asleep under the tree with chocolate smeared over his face and Peter stacking his new gifts on “his side” of the room. For some reason we were told the truth about Santa the next year and how he arrives in Michigan the night before and delivers his presents shortly after the dinner dishes are done.

Now that I have children of my own, Mrs. Laz and I decided to keep the same Christmas Eve tradition alive and open our presents in the flickering light of the Christmas tree. Mrs. Laz at first thought I had a hidden agenda in wanting to open the presents early, but I assured her it was better for all and we could avoid a similar shock that befell my parents. And if I got to open my presents at the same time as the kids, so be it. I probably could wait until morning if I tried really hard and we also got to choose a few presents and open them on Christmas Eve, but so far that hasn’t been necessary.

Another tradition in our family is equally as cute. My family enjoys wrapping my presents and giving me the chance to guess what they are. I admit I have an uncanny ability to figure out their carefully chosen gifts. At first there was frustration as I uncovered what their hard-earned money had provided, but after a while a good laugh was had by all. My skills have slipped a bit in this area of late and I have taken to using the crutch of going into their e-mails and looking for the online purchase receipts. It’s all in good fun and I am sure this is a story that will be told at my funeral – which will be a long time from now, or so I assume.

The holiday season can bring out greed in people too, so I’ve noticed. The Boy has a girlfriend who is rather Elf-like. She is short, happy all the time, drinks gallons of maple syrup and has smelly feet. However, she has a list of Christmas demands and one was for me to devote an entire post to her. I am a very, very, very busy person who can’t just drop everything out of my very, very, very busy day and devote 100 or 200 or even 300 words just to her, if for no other reason than I am so busy, especially these days as I am helping Mrs. Laz with the buying and wrapping of presents and all other assorted Christmas duties that are so numerous I don’t even remember them all. Anyway, I am far too busy to just write about The Ber – that’s his Elfy girlfriend’s name – and I think it’s a shame during the holiday season that she would expect this of me. And I am also so terribly busy right now as this post will attest. Which reminds me, I think the New Mexico Bowl is on right now and who doesn’t want to watch University of New Mexico match up against San Jose State? Good thing I have Tivo. Well, back to Ber. I can’t write an entire post on her but I have something that will sum her up all together. So CLICK HERE and you will get to know her as we know her. I hope the link doesn’t die out soon.

In truth, this season brings out the opportunity to escape all the problems in the world. It also links us with our past. How often do any of us trot out movies made 50 and 60 years ago like It’s A Wonderful Life or White Christmas and listen to the raspy voices of Nat King Cole and Burl Ives and the tender voice of Bing Crosby singing Christmas carols? These movies and songs tug us back to our childhood memories of opening presents with our family, some who are no longer with us and some who are new to our lives. The holiday spirit is alive in everyone and, in my faith, for just this one night, we come a little closer, smile together, hug a little longer and hope for the miracle of peace on Earth and good will toward all. Merry Christmas and happy holidays to everyone..

Listening In

Well, I’m back in the Land O’ The Free. Or am I? It seems there was a lot of dust kicked up over President Bush’s eavesdropping program, including impeachment consideration for this supposed breach of Constitutional etiquette.

Now we come to learn that such eavesdropping isn’t just for republicans anymore. It turns out the democrats’ favorite democrat Bill Clinton had an interest in listening in on chatty telephone conversations from the late Princess Diana. We haven’t been told the purpose for the intrusion and aren’t likely to ever know as the intent and result of the eavesdropping program has been bottled up under the all-encompassing protection of “national security.”

Not sure where the connection between national security and Princess Di comes in, but I’ll go along with it just for my own entertainment. Because I do find it quite ironic and just a bit funny to discover that this was being done by the very same group of people who have claimed the erosion of privacy rights under President Bush. They tell us Bush has essentially created a police state for merely tuning in to hear what potential terrorists were plotting, not what hat Lady Di was going to be wearing at Hat Day.

No worries about this one making too much of a stink for the former president. The mainstream news media is would never dare ask Mr. Clinton to explain any of his rather unusual activities. It just wouldn’t be polite – unless, of course, he decided to become a republican.

Commie Living

We got our business done in The Place That Does Not Exist between halftime of a basketball game in which the prime minister’s son was playing. Well, in truth we also spent a little of the third quarter. It turns out to be a great way to negotiate. The proud father didn’t want to miss too much of the game so the easy answer was “yes” to each of our requests.

And this is what I love about post-Communist countries: nothing works here the way it does anywhere else, and once you’ve gotten past the slightly uncomfortable issue that not too long ago the leaders were singling out people for forced labor camps, you find the government is very friendly and eager to do business.

Now there are certain “inconveniences” about post-Communist countries that have to be overlooked. For example, the water in my four-star hotel was shut off just as I needed a shower this morning. I was told it would be fixed in “one hour.” Of course this is a timeline that should not be relied upon as everything takes “one hour.” This meant no shower this morning, nothing that could come out of the faucet and no flushing of the toilet – all important hygienic needs as it turns out. I did get a small shower from bottled water and a wash cloth, but it lacked the refreshing feel you get from the full trickle that comes out of a post-Communist country hotel showerhead. Just as a follow-up, the water was back on around 5 p.m., but by then I figured my greasy-hair look fit in better with the locals.

There are a lot of rules you have to learn about post-Communist countries and it’s amazing how many people who come to places like this don’t get it. One of the most common comments I would hear from American businesspeople is that they were going to force their hosts to “do things the American way.” If you ever want to be impressed by acts of stubbornness, try to force someone from a post-Communist country to do things the “American way.”

Here are some of the rules I have learned:

• The answer is always yes, even if it’s really no. They expect you to know the real truth.

• Bring lots of Kleenex because the combination of cigarette smoke and hideous pollution tends to stick in the nostrils and be expelled in a smoky-black color.

• Don’t drink the water. Don’t ever drink the water even if you’re host is American and explains he has been drinking the water for years and nothing has ever happened to him (look closely and you will see a third arm growing out of his forehead). When I say water, this includes ice because after ice melts, it’s actually water. Juice is also a no-no as it is made largely from fruit and water and whatever other bits and pieces they want in the mix. To accentuate this point even further, when taking a shower, one should remember to keep your mouth closed tightly so no water will seep in, and when brushing your teeth, you must also avoid rinsing your toothbrush with tap water as it will eventually dry out and leave dying microbes waiting to come alive in your stomach.

• Always wear a seatbelt even if your seatbelt is so far stuffed behind the seat it looks as if it has never been used. Of course your driver would never think of wearing a seatbelt and will give you a weird look when your put your's on, but you will be the lone survivor in a high-speed accident by wearing your seatbelt.

• Never be the lone survivor in a high-speed accident. It only means you will be sent to a post-Communist hospital where you will die a much slower and agonizing death then flying through the windshield and not knowing what hit you.

• If something is stolen from you, chalk it up to your own stupidity. Don’t double your stupidity by filing a police report. It will take at least 10 hours to fill out all the necessary paperwork and whatever is stolen is already re-sold 10 times over by the time the crack police force is on the case. There is one corollary to this rule, however. If the crime involves a Gypsy, the police will have entered every Gypsy camp, beaten several people severely until they have given up which camp has your property. Police don’t need paperwork for this as this is largely seen as a sporting event rather than police work.

• Stay away from the women. I used to think this was more of a guideline than a rule, but Mrs. Laz assures me this is a very important rule with dire physical consequences for even unintentional violations. It’s nice to know my spouse cares so much about my physical and emotional well-being because the women at first appear to be delightful creatures until after getting to know them better. By then you realize why so many men in post-Communist countries are drunk on vodka by 9 a.m. Plus you have to wonder at some point why all women in post-Communist countries are adorned with unattractive moles.

• Don’t get upset when things don’t work. Remember the water problem? The water began running today but as soon as that problem was fixed, the internet stopped working. It’s as if there is a delicate equilibrium that allows for only so many things to work at the same time. By tomorrow I am certain the internet will be back up but the kitchen stove will have ceased to work. Oh, when I say things don’t work, I should also make sure it is understood that half the people don’t work, and that includes the half who actually have jobs.

• Things are relative in post-Communist countries. When I suggest this is a four-star hotel, it should not be confused with a Ritz Carlton. One star here means you share a bathroom and perhaps even a bedroom (if not with people, then when many other creatures); a two-star hotel means you are likely to be robbed but unlikely to have clean sheets; a three-star room means things are clean but nothing is working, including the hotel staff; and four-star just means you paid enough of a bribe to the local tourism ministry to be adorned with four stars on your front door. All in all, it’s just a Motel 6 with a smaller room and smaller TV, which doesn’t much matter because there is nothing to watch except for old Madonna videos and poorly dubbed Clint Eastwood movies. I had one experience in a three-star hotel in Russia in which I entered the room only to be alarmed that it was as cold inside as it was outside. Since it was the end of November in northern Russia and there was three feet of snow on the ground, it was pretty cold. When I asked the front desk if I could get a little heat in the room or at least set fire to the wood bed, I was told there would not be heat until it was winter. I pointed to the snow outside hoping to make my point, but I was firmly told that winter began on December 1 and so there was no need to turn the heat on regardless of what Mother Nature had to say on the subject. But I will say this: those itchy woolen blankets can keep a person pretty damn warm even if there are ice sickles coming out of your nose (dark brown in color, of course).

• Never stray too far on a menu no matter the restaurant. Food we expect to get often has an unsavory twist when it’s served. Perhaps it’s something lost in translation but you may get the eye of a lamb instead of lamb chops. My brother Peter used to have colorful names of inedible food he was served in Russia. There was butt plug of carrot, asshole of beef and slime of fish. We used to have a contest called the Mystery Meal of The Night in which we guessed what we were eating. The person closest would win for that evening. I once won by guessing “some kind of meat.”

• Don’t fly on the local airline in most post-Communist countries. I was in Ukraine a while back and flew on a plane that may have been manufactured by Winnebago. I called it a flying RV because it was square in shape and had that fake wood lining stapled to the walls. I was seated in “First Class” which was in the middle of the plane and consisted of two rows facing each other and separated by a table, the reason for which I am not sure of. I didn’t notice much else as I preferred to keep an eye on the sputtering propellers to make sure they kept us aloft. I quickly learned not to fly Aeroflot under any circumstances. Russians had a name for the national airline and I forget what it is in Russian but it loosely translates to “tubes of death.” There was also another nickname given by Westerners that referred to Aeroflot planes as “Flying Cocktails” since the maintenance workers drank the jet fuel when there was a vodka shortage or just when they ran out of vodka, which was every hour.

I have to admit it is getting better in post-Communist countries and you can see improvements every time you travel to one. I even flew this way on Croatia Airlines which had newer planes than any American airline. It may also have had pilots with far less practical training, but that’s another story.

I wrote this post on Monday and assuming something else breaks down so the internet can begin working again, I will be able to put it up on my blog. We will all know together how long it will take to happen. (Ed. note, the internet is back up as of 8 this morning.)

Merry Ol' Eng-a-land

On Saturday night my partner Greg and I took a train from Stansted to Liverpool Station and then on the Tube to Victoria Station on Saturday. We were hoping to do a little shopping but empty stomachs and stores that close at 5 p.m. in London kept us from doing so.

Downtown London is different than it was when I was last here a decade ago. It’s no longer the land of Twiggy, The Beatles and Monty Python and has turned into The Ali G Show, lots of men named Ali and ethnic restaurants – which is a good thing since it introduced what has been a foreign substance to UK cooking: spices.

We ultimately met up with a deposed leader of a group in opposition to the president of a Central Asian country. There was a lot of passionate discussion about bad people doing bad things to good people, unfair elections and plenty of profiteering by the leaders of the regime. You know, the typical stuff of dictators and the typical complaints from those on the outside. It’s an old story but, as an ironic example, the only significant change in Ukraine following the Orange Revolution was the transfer of titles on black Mercedes S500s from those who lost power to those who gained it through mob rule and plenty of Western help. Like I said, an old story.

Anyway, the opposition leader waxed poetically about taking down the dictator of his former country. He aimed to do it mostly with reason and debate. Well, reason and debate are wonderful things, but generally you need guns and knives to take out entrenched dictators. But he was a nice enough guy and we were happy enough to talk to him and I really believe in his cause. At least I wasn’t as cynical as Greg who suggested we offer the dictator millions or even billions to do the right thing, figuring it’s far cheaper than bombing the place to force the issue.

When we got to Victoria Station, we saw about 30 coppers beginning to surround a pub. We could hear singing and loud, drunken behavior coming from inside and we figured the police were there to keep soccer hooligans from getting out of control. It turns out they weren’t soccer hooligans at all, but cricket hooligans. Of all the kinds of hooliganism one could engage in, imagine choosing cricket! And what would rile a cricket hooligan to get the police involved? A fan from another team dirtying up their sweater vest, or perhaps accusing your opponent of spilling tea during tea time between innings? Needless to say we got out of that potentially dangerous situation in a hurry.

The last time I was in England, I was here with Mrs. Laz and we didn’t go into London; we just drove around the countryside. England was in the midst of a terrible drought and the country was parched and brown. It is just the opposite this time. The ground is soaked and very plush and green. I would love to have taken a photo for you all but the Girl stole my digital camera. And I didn’t know how to use it anyway.

On a sporting note, the Boy thought it would be a good idea to inform me of USC’s embarrassing loss to crosstown rival UCLA. It was great news as it may catapult Michigan to the BCS title game, but I am not sure I needed to know it at 1:20 in the morning here in England. But it was good news. Sorry USC fans, and you know who you are.

All The Secrets That Are Fit To Print

This should make your blood boil. The New York Times, which editorialized incessantly about the Bush Administration’s supposed disregard for the covert identity of Valerie Plame, has printed the details of another highly-classified CIA operation.

The famed Times columnist Seymour Hersh just wrote a piece in which he attempted to make a case that the Bush Administration is more dangerous wounded and is intent on attacking Iran because, as he assumes, what does Bush have to lose now since he is so intent on destroying the world? In the midst of his utter useless rambling, he writes the following paragraph to help prove his point:

“In the past six months, Israel and the United States have also been working together in support of a Kurdish resistance group known as the Party for Free Life in Kurdistan. The group has been conducting clandestine cross-border forays into Iran. I was told by a government consultant with close ties to the Pentagon civilian leadership, as “part of an effort to explore alternative means of applying pressure on Iran.” (The Pentagon has established covert relationships with Kurdish, Azeri, and Baluchi tribesmen, and has encouraged their efforts to undermine the regime’s authority in northern and southeastern Iran.)”

The only way a “Pentagon Consultant” would be aware of such a covert-funded operation would be to have a high enough security clearance to make him aware of so-called “Black Budget” CIA programs that are so sensitive as to be compartmentalized. Even Members of Congress and key staff would only be given portions of these facts, so secret is the nature of such programs.

This means three things: first, the person leaking this information to Hersh is guilty of violating his security clearance and may face charges such as treason or espionage. Second, it also means Hersh is not in possession of all the facts due to the sensitive nature and compartmentalization of the operation. Finally, good reporters are supposed to have corroborating facts from others with similar knowledge. In this case, Hersh merely reports what he heard from one source and then writes later that the entire program was denied by an Israeli “spokesman.” This is less than corroborating evidence and does not pass the smell test of anything more than someone going to The Times with stories of Big Foot.

What we have here is one person, for whatever reason, telling a reporter about a covert operation and, with no real fact-checking, it ends up in the New York Times. If the story is true, it blows a potential CIA program and puts dozens if not hundreds of lives in danger. If not true, it further destabilizes the crumbling relationship with Iran. Either way, it appears that Hersh did not break a sweat to weigh the potential damage to national security versus what constitutes news at The Times.

I have lost track of the number of instances The Times has printed sensitive or classified information. They were the first to write about the CIA prisons used to interrogate and determine the intentions of not very nice people (winning a Pulitzer for this story, by the way). They wrote about the SWIFT tracking of terrorist financing, rendering useless a valuable method of connecting the monetary dots between various groups intent on killing American civilians, many of them in The Times' circulation area. The Times was also the first to publish stories about the warrantless surveillance of telephone conversations between suspected terrorists and those living in the U.S., again blowing a valuable counter-measure to hear what likely bad people were planning to do to Americans and other international targets.

We can argue the merits or even constitutional basis for all the leaked programs, but these debates should be done in private and deliberated by Members of Congress or judges with appropriate security clearances. They should not be leaked to the press by those with their own agenda and certainly the publishers should have enough sense to consider the danger in exposing top secret programs.

There is, of course, a free press and the rights of free speech. However, if The Times continues to do the journalistic equivalent of yelling fire in a crowded theater, they may become the poster child for curtailed press rights and, in the end, this could become the legacy of The Times.

Michigan Gets Hosed Again By Trojans

Also posted on Laz's Sports-O-Rama.

Looking at this from as much distance as possible, I don’t know how USC can jump ahead of Michigan in the most recent AP and USA Today poll. Yes, I am more fan than outsider, but let’s take a look at the situation strictly from cold, hard facts.

Michigan had one loss, a 3-point loss to the Number 1 team all season, while USC also had one loss, a 2-point loss at Oregon State, which did not even finish in the Top 25. The teams had one common opponent in Notre Dame. While it’s true that USC gave the Fighting Irish a real pasting last night, they did so at home, winning by 20. However, Michigan also gave Notre Dame a good spanking, beating them by 26 AT South Bend. Which win is more impressive: a win by 26 points on the road or 20 at home?

There are those who say the Pac 10 is a stronger conference and therefore Michigan’s in-conference wins mean less. The pollsters don’t agree. The Pac 10 has two teams in the Top 25, No 2 USC – disputed, mind you – and No. 21 California. The Big 10 has three teams in the Top 7 with a combined record of 34-2. While both conferences had fairly weak non-conference schedules, the Big 10 still won 41 out of 52 games, a 79 percent winning percentage. The Pac 10 had far fewer games outside of their conference but still won 23 of 31 games – a 74 percent winning percentage. Once again, the edge goes to the Big 10.

I will grant that USC had quality wins over Arkansas and Nebraska and a final strong win over Notre Dame, but they looked pretty weak during a four-week string of three close wins over Washington State, Washington and Arizona and then a loss at Oregon State. Michigan was never seriously challenged in any win with the exception of a 7-point win at Penn State – once ranked 15th in the country.

Slade441 attempts to make good points but doesn’t have the research to back up his arguments as are displayed in this intelligently written report. He does make sense in one of his recent posts of keeping the old-fashion bowl game schedule, which would have pit Michigan against USC in the Rose Bowl. That is the only way to really settle which team is better and then the winner of that game would end up playing a one-game playoff against, presumably, Ohio State to determine the national champ. I would be in favor of that.

While I expect Michigan to get hosed in the near-term rankings, I do think they will end up ranked Number 2 following USC’s humiliating defeat in the Fiesta Bowl against the Buckeyes. I just may end up getting the last laugh on this.

Of course this isn't the first time USC snuck ahead of Michigan. Who could ever forget the cheating Charles White in his fake touchdown during the 1977 Rose Bowl? There can be nobody alive who doesn't remember that, right?

Coulter Says It Best

The more or less universally hated Ann Coulter (at least by liberals) makes good points in her most recent column. She addresses the imans who were not allowed on the U.S. Airways flight to Phoenix the other day, likely resulting in numerous lawsuits and plenty of harrumphs. Read Ann if you're interested.