"Do I look like I care?"

Image is everything. Take Ted Cruz.  He's that everyman running around the Midwest in jeans and plaid shirts. Of course his name isn't Ted. It's Rafael. And he really isn't an everyman since every man doesn't graduate from Princeton University and go on to the Harvard Law School. Every man doesn't have a wife who was a higher up in Goldman, Sachs and  Company. And it isn't every man that gets to work with George Bush to help steal the presidency from Al Gore.  Rafael's wife, Heidi also did her part for that gang of war criminals by working in the White House for Condoleeza Rice. And while Rafael is proud to drag out his two daughters to make smarmy remarks about president Obama, he never mentions his own parents. I'm sure they were lovely people even though they were both married twice. And unlike Rubio's parents they were not among the hard-working poor, but highly educated. In fact Rafael had two half sisters: Roxanna and Miriam. Sadly Miriam had several brushes with the law for theft and public intoxication and died of a prescription drug overdose. None of this is anything to be ashamed of, of course, unless you're trying to convince that average Americans that you, too, are an average American. In which case you might just as well ditch the jeans, which look dopey on you anyway, and instead of those tacky plaid shirts, wear a very expensive figure-flattering suit which you can easily afford.

NOT ENOUGH ABOUT HIM.

I recently bought a book on my kindle because I was in a hurry to choose something and thought this Hollywood bio might have some good gossip. The book was But Enough About Me by Burt Reynolds. I was never a fan of his kind of movies and always assumed he was an arrogant and vain mutli-married macho boor. Boy was I wrong. The book is charming, endlessly interesting, and more about all the people he liked than about him.  He praises such famous people as Bette Davis (a close friend) Dinah Shore (the love of his life) Roy Rogers, Jim Brown, Dolly Parton, Goldie Hawn, Sally Field, Marcello Mastroianni, the stuntmen he's worked with and admired, and many others. Even those celebrities he didn't like (such as Racquel Welch)  are still praised for their talents if not their character.  And I doubt he ever had a problem with anyone's race or sexual preference. He was candid enough to admit that posing nude for Cosmo was a mistake, especially right after the praise he received for Deliverance.  He also admitted he starred in Boogie Nights reluctantly, while still praising the director and cast. As Spencer Tracy said to Katharine Hepburn in Desk Set, "Never assume." So while this is essentially light reading, it came as a great lesson to me. I will certainly try in the future not to typecast a person before I know more about them.. Who ever thought I'd become a Burt Reynolds fan?

Note: So many rags today delight in showing celebrities when they are old. Let's recall how Burt (who is 80) looked and still looks in many of his movies.

"He shouldn't have won. I hate, hate, hate him."

Paul Ryan had a chance to prove he's not the spoiled, arrogant, biased shit I think he is, but he blew it. During the President's speech he sat stony faced, remote, unsmiling, a sour-faced poor sport. What is it with these Republicans? Don't they have any feelings? Any sense of fair play? They are all like seven-year-olds who lost a game of stick ball. As usual the President's speech was brilliant, beautifully delivered and full of hope. Now if there's anything Republicans hate, it's hope. Unless they hope to take  food from the hungry, shelter from the homeless, and hope they get the chance to kowtow at the feet of the Koch brothers(although I like how THE RUDE PUNDIT says it even more). And they keep grinding out new robots like Ryan. Cold, selfish, full of false Christianity. And to think this heartless creature nearly was Vice President!

NOTE:If I didn't think he was traitorous enough, today he said "Obama's State of the Union degrades the presidency." There seems to be no depth to which these slimey Republicans will no sink.

Not as nice as they pretend.

Consumer Cellular pretends to be so consumer friendly, but they're not. True they have simple phones and their rates are lower than most. They're ideal for me, who only wants to send and receive calls. But after one year, the battery needs replacing. They don't replace it. And, it seems, neither does anyone else. When I complained about this, their indiscreet operator said "We don't want to replace the battery. We want you to buy a new phone." This seems like an odd goal for a company that depends a great deal on the goodwill of seniors, who may not be able to afford a new phone every 12 months. But that's the way our greedy world: planned obsolescence. Everyone says "Get a smart phone." But I don't want to be that person who is constantly looking at phone and ignoring everything around him.

RICKY TICKY TACKY

I admire Ricky Gervais because he's a versatile, talented actor, defender of animals and an outspoken atheist. I don't like him because he's a nasty, bitchy, cheap-shot queen.  No question that he's incredibly witty and facile, but his humor is more sadistic than even sardonic. Fortunately for him he was born in the right time when acts like his are accepted and rewarded. Forty years ago Gervais would have been a made-up and gowned emcee for a drag club in Greenwich Village.

YUCK!

DOUBLE YUCK!

A NATIONAL ILLNESS.

Broadcast news is shallow, lazy, and irresponsible. Nowhere is this more evident than in their coverage of the Power Ball Lotto. Leading up to the drawings there are cheery reports as to how fast tickets are selling, and personal interviews with buyers telling us the wonderful things they will do if they win. The news delights in showing long lines of people clutching their cash, hopeful smiles on their faces. What they don't mention or cover are the number of those people in those lines who are spending the rent money, cash that could be used for their children, money they should be saving for the future. All in the hopes that they will be that one person in 292 million who wins, at latest count, a billion dollars. (Who on this earth needs a billion dollars?) You might as well show people walking up to a seaside cliff and tossing their money into the ocean. For the past several drawings there has been no winner, which should show these gullible dreamers how futile lotteries are. Eventually somebody will win, and more than likely be crushed by the burden of dealing with so much money, so many pleading friends and bitter enemies, possible threats, and the horrible realization they are not that much happier. But this isn't something the news ever reports on. It's too real, too disturbing. So you'll see giddy anchors gleefully reporting the latest lottery figures. Meanwhile in homes all over America millions of people will be looking at little pieces of paper whose numbers are nothing like the that of winning draw and wishing that the hadn't thrown away so much money on an impossible dream.