CALL ME SNAKE

It's that time of year again. No, I'm not talking about Christmas, Hannukah, or Kwanzaa. I'm talking about the Great First Annual Pre-Yuletide No-Holds-Barred Down-and-Dirty Bumper Sticker Sweepstakes. There are no ground rules for this competition, save for one: Given the holiday spirits that have taken over our nation like a magical balm, I request that you make your bumper stickers positive and uplifting, trying to keep your negativity and cynicism to a minimum. That said, here is the first (winning) entry:

LIFE, LIBERTY, AND THE PURSUIT OF TORTURE -- All Hail the Bush Legacy!

Rest assured that I will give each and every one of your entries as much scrutiny as I did my own entry before announcing it the winner. Good luck, play ball, and remember: Keep it clean!

Today we’re doing one of the things we do best here at Call Me Snake, announcing a new feature--this time a sneak preview of an actual TV pilot written by yours truly. I wear many hats in the course of a day but many of you don’t know that one of the things I do--and do best--is write pilots for the small screen, what we used to call “teleplays” in the old days. Here’s the pilot for my latest series: "I GOT EARS (The True Adventures of Jimmie the Blind Cop)."

Jimmie walks to his desk and trips over a chair suspiciously left in the middle of the aisle. He curses: “Christ, who’s been f__’ing with the furniture around here?"

Snickers can be heard from two other detectives, Marino and Bonez. “The guy takes a shot in the face and now it’s like he’s mad at the world,” Marino whispers. Bonez nods: “So he loses an eye. Get over it!”

The captain, Joe Murtaugh, a burly black man comes into the squad room to check out the disturbance. “Will you ladies quit your squabbling? How many times I gotta tell ya’, we’re like a family, y’hear? We don’t have to like each other. We don’t have to love each other. But let’s not kill each other -- unless, of course, it’s absolutely necessary. Say in one of those ‘fratricide-type’ situations. Unnerstand?”

”OK boss,” grunts Marino. “I hear ya,” says Bonez.

Murtaugh turns to Jimmie: “What about you Conlon? Can we get past this? Or is something still eating you?

“Well, cap,” Jimmie begins, “something about this case that’s still not right. I was over at the crime scene the other day and I heard something...”

“Here we go again,” says Marino, rolling his eyes.

“He hears dead people,” Bonez adds.

“Knock it off,” says Murtaugh. Again turning to Jimmie: “So tell us Conlon, what’d you hear this time?”

”You’re not going to like this cuz it means recanvassing the whole area. But the super says he heard the shots and then saw the skell bust out the front door. But I was eating a chili dog right outside the building, and I’m sure I heard the door open before the shots.”

”What’re you sayin’?” asks Murtaugh.

”I’m saying we’ve got a bad guy in lockup. But he’s the wrong guy. I’m gonna talk to the super this morning. Go over his story.”

”What’s a matter, Conlon?” interjects Bonez. “Can’t stand to see someone else close a case?”

”I got no problem with that, Bonez. But when you close a case, close it right...”

Jimmie walks down the hall, calling for his dog: “Scooter, scooter...? Hey, which one of you clowns took my dog?” (Snickers can be heard from the vicinity of Marino’s and Bonez’s desks.) Jimmie stumbles again: “It’s not funny...”

[End of Prologue--OPENING CREDITS ROLL...]

I've been spammed in what I'd have to call the worst possible way. Yesterday I got a comment on an old entry that was not a comment at all: It was ostensibly a list of links to lesbo porn sites. I don't want that kind of thing on my blog. I'd prefer that the content remains wholesome family fair--the kind of thing I'd be comfortable having my kids read, not that I'd let them anywhere near this place. But the list of items posted on my blog were pretty darn obscene--in some cases referring to things I haven't even heard about, though I confess to being curious--and I don't know how to get rid of them. Worse yet, they are not even real lesbo porn links, despite provocative titles that suggest otherwise. The links take you to some news site written in what I believe is Polish--at least I think it's news, and I think it's Polish, but not reading Polish places me at a disadvantage on both those fronts.

Don't worry, I'm doing my best to get rid of the offensive passages as we speak. Blog.com Technical Support is on the case and it should only be a matter of minutes. Yes sir, the problem is under control. Hullo, uh, Technical Support, are you out there? Is anyone home? Hullo, hullo...?

In Cambridge, Massachusetts, where I live, you never know what's going to happen next. The most mundane activity imaginable, like food shopping, can become an unpredictable, and sometimes intellectually stimulating, event. Last week, for example, I biked over to Whole Foods just before the 10 p.m. closing time to get some last-minute supplies for the kid's school lunches. (I usually launch into an invective at this point about how expensive--i.e., overpriced--the store is, but I'll refrain this time.) I was near the dairy counter when a neighbor and long-time Cambridge resident asked me: "Is soy milk vegan? A vegan is coming to stay with us and I don't know if they drink soy milk." I hemmed and hawed for a bit, not sure how to answer her, when a man in a black suit who looked like he knew what he was talking about came to my rescue. Soy milk, he maintained, was kind of "risky." To play it safe, he suggested, "you're better off with rice milk." I'm not sure what kind of reasoning he used, but at the time the argument seemed persuasive.

A few minutes later, I ran into a well-known civil liberties lawyer and a well-known "lefty" (I'm not talking about his batting stance) at the checkout counter and asked him whether he still thought John Roberts was a reasonable pick, as he had argued so convincingly in the local "underground" paper. He told me he still felt "pretty comfortable" about Roberts. As for the embattled Miers, he did not know much at the time (nor did anyone else, it seems, save for her penpal W.), but thought she was probably less scary than some of the certifiable nut jobs whose names had been bandied about--'people who would lock folks like you and me up in a second."

After making my daily contribution to my credit card debt, I got back on the bike, griping about the exorbitant prices, but glad--at least on this night--that I lived in Cambridge.

Following up on yesterday's exclusive on burnt muffins, I've decided to take up another burning-hot issue--an idea inspired by (stolen from?) "Things I Wonder About" (see link on right). "What's up with people who wear shorts outside their sweatpants?" asked the author of that blog, Old Roses. It's a question I've often asked myself, and frankly I don't have any answers. From a fashion point of view, the shorts-outside-the-sweatpants look is an atrocious statement. Practically speaking, it makes no sense either. Allow me to illustrate: Suppose you're doing a sport, or some other activity, and get warm. You'd like to take the sweatpants off but then you've got the shorts on the outside and the underwear underneath (or worse yet, underwear underneath). Nowhere to go, in other words. If you ask me, the whole thing makes no sense whatsoever. I'd go so far as to say it verges on the nonsensical.

Here's another "News Short": Yesterday was a sad day in my household. I retired a pair of shorts (as in actually throwing them in the trash)--a pair I'd had at least since high school, and before they were shorts, they'd been one of my favorite pairs of pants. My mother did the alteration herself--a job that has long since stood the test of time. We're talking at least 35 years here. But they split right down the back and another hole was starting to form on the side, so it was time to say goodbye--another end to a long short life.

Ironically, I had just come back from picking my daughter up from her grammar school. I'd been debating with the school administration over a new policy that forced parents to pick up their children in the schoolyard rather than in the classroom, as had been the custom. But with holes in my pants, I looked like the kind of guy who should be hanging around grammar school lots.

I've been wasting a lot of time of late (which should come as no surprise to readers of this blog who don't know me when I'm not wasting time), filing claims for an $18 million writer's class action lawsuit. This has involved tearing apart my office, looking up contracts I've signed over the past decade or two with various publishers. One I stumbled across in my research even had the audacity to seek the entire copyright "THROUGHOUT THE UNIVERSE (emphasis added), in any and all media and forms of publication." I guess you'd have to call those terms rather expansive. Being farsighted, the publishers realized that limiting the contract to "throughout the galaxy" wouldn't have done it, as tens of billions of years from now, the Milky Way is destined to merge with other members of the so-called "Local Group," rendering that language ("throughout the galaxy") ambiguous.

Sorry if I'm feeling put upon these days, but my homework schedule has become intense of late, on top of all the other things I'm supposed to do and still try to fit in a couple of minutes of sleep each day (doctor's orders!). I shouldn't say "my" homework schedule since, technically speaking, it's the homework of my 6-year-old daughter who started 1st grade three weeks ago. The first week was great but then the homework kicked in--every single day of the week, plus an extra load on Friday, just to make sure you don't have a moment's relaxation over the weekend. I never had homework in 1st grade. Why is my daughter, a public school student, getting it every single day?

When I was a kid during that whimsical era dominated by the Cold War, we were in lockstep competition with the Soviets. But there aren't any Soviets around these days, in case you haven't noticed. Next there was the "made in Japan" scare. Our kids had to work extra hard in school so that at least one thing was still made in the USA, even if that meant it was actually manufactured in Thailand. But the Japanese have their own problems too, from what I've heard.

So that leaves the usual culprit, our "Education President" and his so-called "No Child Left Behind" (NCLB) policy. Informed educators (as opposed to the unformed ones) uniformly consider NCLB to be a joke. The only thing it does accomplish is to waste most of our educational effort on largely worthless standardized tests. Which is why my 6-year-old has homework every night. Which is why I don't have any time to watch television anymore, assuming I was the sort to watch television, which I emphatically am not. But when you throw in the homework time on top of all the other obligations a working parent has to meet, there really isn't any time to sleep, my pledges to my doctor notwithstanding. So I'd like to register my own small protest against No Child Left Behind (though I won't be setting up a tent in Crawford), while suggesting a name change that describes the program more accurately: No Parent Left Asleep.

Last year, Julianne Moore starred in a movie called "The Forgotten." It's about a woman and man who are told after the disappearance of their children that those children never existed in the first place. "Flightplan," the new Jodie Foster vehicle I hope not to see, is evidently similar: Foster's son disappears during a commercial flight (should have gone first class) but no one other than her will admit the boy was ever on the flight. Call me old-fashioned but doesn't it seem weird that two movies would have such similar plots, especially when the plots themselves are beyond-the-pale ludicrous? How can you tell a mother that her son doesn't exist and expect her to believe it? Especially when she's traveling with a bag full of Lego blocks, along with other subtle hints such as all the frequent flier miles her son is racking up for the trip, even while he's safely tucked away in an overhead storage bin.

The same goes for the Moore story. You may forget your kid momentarily, and pull the occasional "Home Alone"--as in going to Europe and remembering him a few days later when you're thinking of who to send a postcard to--but you're not going to actually FORGET your kid, as in permanently blotting out his or her existence. That just won't wash. Which is why I forgot to see "The Forgotten" and will do my best to avoid "flightplan" as well. And if I do have a lapse and remember, please remind me to forget.

Last year, President Bush had a vision: to put a man on the moon. A few days ago, NASA confirmed this vision with a plan for doing just that, putting a man on the moon by 2018. But the moon is, well, doggone far and getting a man (or woman) up there (on there?) is going to be pretty doggone hard, isn't it? But wait a minute? Wasn't some fellow named Armstrong messing around up there (on there?) back in 1969, almost 50 YEARS before NASA's current target? Well, if we could do it once--or actually several times--we should be able to do it again, right? Maybe not. Back in the 1960s, NASA's space program attracted some of the best minds in the country. The agency has come down more than a few pegs since then. But maybe, just maybe, we'll be able to do what we did 50 years before. The key, the experts at NASA say, will be to use old-fashioned technology. In the meantime, "visionary" projects like this will drain money from scientific space missions that everyone knows yield far greater payoff.

But then again nobody cares about my visions. I say maybe we can get an airplane to fly again at Kitty Hawk. We missed the 100-year anniversary (which would have been 2003) but we can always shoot for 2053. Or at least we can dream...

I DON'T WATCH TV BUT... the Larry David show, Curb Your Enthusiasm, is pretty darn funny. Jeff Garlin, who plays the manager, is note perfect. David, himself, is always amusing and the one guy in Hollywood I have to worry about as my wife likes him too much. (All that money ain't bad either, she admits.)

I DON'T WATCH TV BUT... the first season of Lost, which I'm now watching in reruns (since I never saw the original as I don't watch TV), is not half bad. I never would have checked it out were it not for the recommendation of a friend who never watches TV.

I DON'T WATCH TV BUT... James Spader and William Shatner can, at times, be brilliant together in Boston Legal. Who knew that the ertswhile Kirk was a virtual comic genius?

I DON'T WATCH TV BUT... Steve Carrell is hilarious and, on his own, almost makes The Office worth watching. I never saw the original British version, which is supposed to be even better, because (you guessed it) I don't watch TV.

I DON'T WATCH TV BUT... Puppets Who Kill is supposed to be an offbeat, original comedy. I have this on the highest authority from another friend who never watches TV. But I have yet to see the show for two reasons: One, the name kind of spooks me. (I used to have nightmares about puppets who kill when I was a kid.) Two, I don't watch TV.

I DON'T WATCH TV BUT... justice was indeed blind when network officials at ABC decided to can the short-lived series, "Blind Justice." What will become of the German shepherd who showed such promise in his role as Hank? Blind Justice was the only police show I liked last year, as well as the only police show I ever watched, because (as you know) I don't watch TV.