I'll take "The Penis Mightier" for 100, Trebek.

Or is the pen mightier?

I heard the rumor that Dave Chappelle was going to do a free show at midnight in Pioneer Square via Twitter. I briefly considered heading down there but I really haven't been home much as it is with work taking up most of my time.

Because of the sound issue (Dave brought a small, battery operated mike and amp) when close to 12,000 people showed up I'm glad I didn't. Odds are I wouldn't of caught a word he was saying.

That doesn't take away from the coolness of the event and Chappelle in general for trying to pull it off.

In a broader sense I really am rethinking my disdain for Twitter. Between the recent uprising in Iran and now this I do think there is potential to really move people to the streets. Can you imagine how Twitter would've changed the anti-war movement in the run up to the Iraq war?

It's almost like the fear that online social networking would detract from real world interaction is not only wrong, but wildly wrong. Twitter has the power to bring people together in the real world. That's pretty incredible.

Next time we'll have a foolproof coffin.

There is no God.

It's that every now and again - not often, but occasionally - you get to be a part of justice being done.

Do you remember when AIDS was held out by fundamentalist types as proof of God's disapproval of homosexuality? How in the 80s all evidence that AIDS wasn't exclusively a gay disease was lost on those types?

I wonder how the Pat Robertsons of the world will react to the amazing news that AIDS may actually hold the cure for lung and other types of cancer.

So how does CTMP halt cancer progression? Using biochemical analysis to analyze the expression levels of certain proteins, scientist found that overexpression of CTMP shut down not only Akt signaling but also protein synthesis, proliferation, angiogenesis and cell cycle progression of lung cancer cells while normal cells were not affected. Not only was lung cancer progression halted in 9-week old mice but the authors of the study found that cancer cells died from apoptosis.

Unlike chemotherapy which preferentially affects cancer cells but still has deleterious consequences to normal tissue after prolonged treatment, lentiviral mediated gene therapy “surgically” targets tumor cells while sparing normal tissue.

"God's Wrath" just might end one of the most horrible diseases ever to plague man providing incalculable good to the world.

If there was a God it's almost as if he goes out of his way to make the Pat Robertsons of the world look bad. Hmmm.

You, you with the banjo, can you help me? I seem to have lost my sense of direction!

I hope y'all had a great holiday.

I had an absolutely wonderful 4th of July with my family. We had a little picnic out at my grandparent's place where my mom lives now, just like when we were kids. The day consisted of mass quantities of burgers, homemade blackberry wine and catching up with family.

At one point my mom's boyfriend got out his tractor and hooked up a flatbed trailer and gave tours of the makeshit golfcourse he'd cut in the lawn. Watching the uncles, aunts and cousins hang on for dear life while laughing their drunken asses off tickled me to no end.

But the absolute high point of the day was a musical surprise my 15-year old daughter sprung on the family.

To back up a bit- when we were kids my grandfather would break out either his ukelele or banjo and play old tunes while the whole family would sing along. Grandpa was in the navy in WW 2 and while he was in Hawaii he'd even formed a little band and recorded a couple of tunes on phonograph.

Just recently grandpa's banjo turned up and my daughter, who is very muscially inclined, decided to teach herself how to play it.

So she gets out this beautiful instrument with pearl inlay that was made almost 100 years ago and asks us what we want to hear. "Whatever you know how to play," we told her.

She starts strumming, the tune sounds familiar but tough to place until she begins singing:

It's close to midnight and something evil's lurking in the dark
Under the moonlight, you see a sight that almost stops your heart
You try to scream but terror takes the sound before you make it
You start to freeze as horror looks you right between the eyes
You're paralyzed

'Cause this is thriller, thriller night
And no one's gonna save you from the beast about strike
You know it's thriller, thriller night
You're fighting for your life inside a killer, thriller tonight

Believe it or not this song works surprisingly well on the banjo. We almost bust a gut we were laughing so hard.

Alright, alright, Mickey's a mouse, Donald's a duck, Pluto's a dog. What's Goofy?

Via Digby I think Senator Bernie Sanders has hit on the right question with regards to what form health care reform takes in the senate---

So I think, with all due respect to Max and his hard work, it's the wrong strategy. I think the strategy should be to say to all 60 members of the Democratic caucus that even if you don't want a public plan in the final bill, you should commit to ending the Republican filibuster. You don't need 60 votes to pass legislation. You need 60 votes to end the filibuster. And if we do that, we can get a strong public plan that will be real change.

...

Look, the Democrats said give us 60 votes so we can come up with something. They gave it to us! I'm not a Democrat, I'm an Independent, but I caucus with the Democrats. They gave us 60 votes. So how many do we need? Seventy? Eighty? I understand that there are some Democrats, without ascribing motives, who are not comfortable voting for a strong public plan period. But I think it is not asking too much that they vote against the Republican filibuster.

We need to stop asking pinheads like Lieberman or Nelson whether they prefer the public option, full on single payer or the do nothing solution all the senate "moderates" seem to be leaning towards. Their answers are as empty as their souls. If they're going to vote against the final health care reform bill because they remain industry whores that's their choice.

The real question is how they'll vote on cloture, not what sort of health care reform they'll support. That's how we're going to seperate the men from the boys. Or as in this case the men from the spineless weasels.

Gentlemen of the court, there are times that I'm ashamed to be a member of the human race and this is one such occasion.

I'm long past being disgusted that conservatives regularly root for millions of their fellow Americans to be killed by terrorists but still remain stumped on the complete absence of logic behind this idea. Apparently the formula is something along the lines of...

Major terrorist attack while Republicans are in charge = country will turn to Republicans to protect them.

On the other hand...

Major terrorist attack while Democrats are in charge = country will turn to Republicans to protect them.

Heads they win, tails we lose.

I coalesce the vapors of human experience into a viable and meaningful comprehension.

Happy birthday to Mel Brooks!

In celebration of 84 years of the master here's a little AMC behind the scenes video of the making of Young Frankentein..

Success, fame, and fortune, they're all illusions. All there is that is real is the friendship that two can share.

What a sad day yesterday was. A couple of generational icons lost in a matter of few hours. In their own ways both Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson defined the decades in which they exploded into the American psyche.

I found myself oddly reflective last night about the death of Jackson. More than Farrah (I was a Heather Thomas pink bikini poster guy) he was the star that you really couldn't escape when I was a teenager in the 80s. I was not a fan. I should say: I tried not to be a fan. The guy was so talented he made that prospect difficult as hell.

A flood of memories of growing up in the 80s elbowed their way into my consciousness last night.

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I was with some buddies at the "Rhoddies." The Rhoddies are Portland's Rhododendron Garden located next to a golf course in Southeast Portland. The Rhoddies were a popular place for teenagers to drink and hang out for impromptu parties if you didn't have anything better to do on the weekend.

Somewhere a boom box was blaring what I'd like to think in this memory is "Beat It," although it could have just as well been Madonna or Culture Club. Everybody has fluffy 80's hair. I'm wearing by dark grey Miami Vice jacket with the sleeves rolled up.

At some point I broke away from my buddies and and was standing on a foot bridge by myself sipping a Bartles and James. It's an absolutely beautiful summer night. Bats were swooping down on the bugs by the lake. I remember thinking to myself: "goddammit, it's good to be alive."

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We're out at my grandparent's farm on the 4th of July. Besides shooting off illegal fireworks and stealing shots of grandpa's homemade cherry wine, we also spend a good portion of the day tearing around the property on my little red go cart and playing pick up football.

Practically everybody I love at that moment is in that one place.

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I'm sitting in my old, red Volkswagon Rabbit in the parking lot of McDonalds waiting for my girlfriend to get off her shift. I'm listening to the radio and as sure as I write this it's "Billie Jean."

When my she finally gets in the car there's some perfunctory discussion about where we're going to go. A movie? Grab something to eat? It's all bullshit. We know we're going to wind up parked on a dark street somewhere for some serious snogging and heavy petting.

She apologizes to me because she smells like french fries. I lie and tell her I can't smell the fries. The truth is she does, but I don't care. I like french fries.

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It's Halloween and "Thriller" is playing in the other room while I'm getting Frankenstein makeup applied to my face. I'm going to be the climax of this particular dance. The late, great Mark Zimmerman who was the King of Halloween has planned this dance as his Magnum Opus.

Mark has rigged a scaffolding in the middle of the dance floor going forty feet up to the ceiling of the gymnasium. To this he's affixed a pulley system. In my Frankenstein costume I'm going to be lying on a gurney under a sheet, wheeled out at the right moment to the song "Weird Science" and actually cranked up to the ceiling of the gym where Mark has placed strobe lights near the skylights to simulate lightning. All of this for a high school dance.

Because it was dangerous I asked some guys I could trust to actually wheel me out and run the pulley system. I couldn't see anything under the sheet as they pushed me into the gym and the other kids started cheering but I vividly remember my best buddy Jeff leaning over the sheet near my face, stinking of beer and whispering "have a nice trip, Frankie" just before he socked me in the nuts.

I was going to die.

Of course it went without a hitch and as soon they lowered me back down and as Oingo Boingo blurted "it's alive!" I hopped up and did my own version of Jack's zombie dance.

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I'm in my high school history class and Mr. Sprinkle is rushing through his lesson so he can tell us "war stories" in the last 10 minutes of class. Mr. Sprinkle was in Vietnam and decided at some point that the best lesson he could give his students wasn't out of books. He could tell us stories from his own life about how horribly stupid war is.

Today he's telling us a horrible story about how American troops sometimes slept behind idling tanks to stay warm, even though ordered not to and how once a month a soldier would be killed when the tank backed over them.

In part because of Mr. Sprinkle I have a lifelong love of history, a deep distrust of authority and a wicked sense of humor.

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I'm on a date heading to a party and we're lost. Ahead of us smack dab in the middle of the street is a GIANT puddle. My date and I are arguing about whether my Rabbit can make it across. I say it can, she doesn't think there's a chance in hell.

I hit the gas and the car stalls right in the middle of the puddle. We both have to wade through a foot of water to shore so I can call a tow truck. That was my first and last date with that girl.

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I'm sad about Michael Jackson passing. There was so much talent and potential in that guy and he just went off the rails. It's depressing that he was obviously so uncomfortable in his own skin. I kept hoping he'd get it turned around. He could hae been the elder statesman of pop music.

But truth be told was really brought tears to my eyes yesterday was all these memories from the time when Jackson really was the King of Pop. I thought about goofing around with my friends and family, being young and in love, dancing, and being so damned alive and sooooo damned stupid at the same time. Jackson's death makes all of that wonderful stuff seem so very far away.

It makes me feel so... old.

You are disturbing the peaceful mood I'm in. You are destroying the frame of mind I'm in.

They're shooting the show "Leverage" downstairs which made it fun getting into the office this morning. I'm a little bummed because Will Wheaton has been in Portland guest starring on that show and shooting all week but his stint ended before today. I would love to meet him.

Despite that I'm going to sneak out at some point and see if I can spot Timothy Hutton.

Also - if you don't regularly visit Kung Fu Monkey you should check it out. The blog's owner is the creator/ producer of "Leverage" and a fairly liberal guy who has written some GREAT essays against the use of force in Iraq, etc.

The world is divided into two kinds of people, those who have friends and those who are lonely like poor Tuco.

No blogging today as I'll be hiking along the Appalachian Trail for some "Me Time."