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..

Damned your eyes, Igor!

Doc Zaius tagged me with eyes meme last week. I'm going to be nice and not tag anyone else, but here are my eyes. Let it be known that those eyes are connected to a Clooneyesque visage on a perfect physique if you were wondering.

He vould have an enormous schwanzstucker.

Ladybug pointed me towards this post and dared me (dared me!) to disclose any man crushes I might secretly harbor.

Well, I'm man enough to admit when I find another somebody attractive, even if they happen to have a Schwanzstucker.



Gene Wilder

In his prime there was nobody better in Hollywood that could play a tightly coiled maniac like Gene. He has a unique ability to be able to portray menace, likability and lunacy all at the same time. What's not to like?


Bruce Campbell

The Chin has a self-depreciating sense of humor. I'm a sucker for that sort of thing. Plus- he wouldn't kick you out of bed for eating crackers. He may cut you in two with his chainsaw, but he won't kick you out of bed.


Charlie Chaplin

Something about the Little Tramp just makes me want to give him a hug and tell him it'll be alright.


Zachary Levi

Chuck is a bit like me- geeky with a dangerous side.


Adam West

It was a toss-up between West and Shatner but I though Shatner would be too obvious. They have virtually the same acting style which is to say they can't act a lick, but what redeems them is they get that fact and run with it. They're in on the joke.

Clint Eastwood

In real life Clint's not such a great guy just ask Sandra Locke, but The Man With No Name was about as studly as you could get. I'd love to share a poncho with that guy.

In my loneliness I decided that if I could not inspire love, which is my deepest hope, I would instead cause fear.

A tear shed at the passing of Peter Boyle. With very few actual lines he absolutely stole "Young Frankenstein." He parlayed a scary look and a gruff personality into a lifetime schtick but was supposedly one of the nicest guys in show business.

He inspired a lot more love than fear. RIP, sir.

Are you saying that I put an abnormal brain into a seven and a half foot long, fifty-four inch wide GORILLA?

General Abizaid seems to be channeling Goldilocks. In a Senate hearing yesterday he told Democratic Senators that withdrawing troops from Iraq would increase sectarian violence. Then, in response to questioning from Maverick John McCain about increasing troops by about 20,000 men (as he's been pushing on the Tim Russert circuit,) Abizaid answered that our "troop posture needs to stay where it is" in order that the Iraqi government stands up and fills the gap on it's own. Apparently the porridge is just right.

Which is odd because most of us find this administration's Iraq porridge recipe nauseating at any temperature.

Here's a thought: when you are occupying a country that has an unemployment rate with estimates ranging from 28% all the way up 70% then the level of troops you send in to help administer order might be wholly meaningless. That's a heck of a lot of dissatisfied people who have nothing to do but sit around, get angry and look for somebody to blame. The leap towards violence isn't so great when you take that into consideration.

Which is why our economic policies and aid to Iraq following the war was at least as important, if not moreso, as our military strategy. Those of you who have some sense of U.S. policy in the twentieth century and recognize the genius that was the Marshall Plan are probably breathing a sigh of relief. Don't. You'd be forgetting that this is the Bush administration formulating our policy here. They don't learn from history they MAKE history. Or some other such nonsense.

Conservatives have waited decades for an opportunity like that presented in Iraq- a chance to demonstrate to all that conservative economic principles work. They looked at Iraq like Dr. Frankenstein staring at a slab of recently exumed body parts. "Finally a chance to show the world I'm not crazy!"

(Insert evil crazy laugh here)

The dust from the defeat of the Iraqi had hardly cleared before the conservative mad scientists snapped on their surgical gloves, got out their scalpels and got to work. They implemented a flat tax of 15% (exempting foreign companies doing contract work in Iraq,) made sure organized labor was deterred by making all of Iraq a "right to work" state, employed the cheapest labor possible (read: non-Iraqis) and pretty much sent blood and body parts flying as they worked deep into the night.

Is it any wonder they wound up creating a monster? Now their creation is advancing on the town, leaving the bodies of villagers and constables in it's wake and they want to quibble about how many torch-wielding townspeople we're going to send out to meet it?

MMMMMMmmmmmmmm.

I was just about ready to drop the Paul Hackett thing after listening to him on Randi the other night. It's pretty clear he got shafted by the powers-that-be in the democratic party in encouraging him to run then reversing course and encouraging him to drop from the race to clear the field for Sherrod Brown. Despite Paul's obvious displeasure he encouraged us to work towards a Democratic majority and, yes, to help to elect Brown to the U.S. Senate.

Then this morning lefty radio personality Thom Hartman blundered into the debate on his local Portland show and decided to pull back the scabs and, to insult to injury, pour lemon juice onto them. Thom accused Hackett of "wrecking" the party in the way he was so vocal about the political machinations of Reid and Schumer that caused him to pull out of the race. Thom then proceeded to repeat almost verbatim the arguments made by party insiders when this issue initially exploded (Brown never said he wouldn't run, only that he was undecided and it doesn't matter because when he eventually DID decide to run he declared before Hackett.) Arguments of questionable validity weakened further by the point that they totter dangerously over the precipice of irrelevance.

If you put the general he said/ she said aspect of the debate aside you're still left with the fact that it was the Senate Democratic leadership and not the Democratic voters of Ohio that chose the party's candidate to run against DeWine. That's why so many of us went postal at the news of Hackett's exit. That's what really threatens to wreck the party Mr. Hartmann. The same-old-same-old insider politics that have been slowly destroying the Democratic party over the course of the last thirty years. That and they hurt the "Fighting Democrat" frame.

In the past few months there's been a ton of discussion about the need to frame issues and define strong narratives for our candidates. So you'll understand when so many of us were exited by the "Fighting Democrat" story line that's been evolving with the 56 (oops, 55) Iraq war veterans that are running as dems. The prospect that many of these veterans could soon be in the halls of congress, sitting on committees and getting into the grills of congressional chickenhawks sends us into spasms of almost orgasmic glee.

Hackett and the rest of these fighting Democrats are Bush & Cheney and the rest of Congress that voted for the Iraq war resolution, both Democrats and Republicans, Frankenstein Monster. They MADE these men and women. They sent them into Iraq for nebulous reasons and formed them under a crucible of fire and IEDS. Now their creation is getting set to storm the castle and rip them limb from limb. They're scared. They should be.

Can you imagine the confrontation between some chickenhawk congressman arguing for, say, an attack on Iran and one of these veterans who have friends and family in the Shia line of fire so to speak in Iraq? There'd be feathers all over the floor when it was finally finished.

The first step towards what so many of us crave; a rational foreign policy, would be to elect as many of these Democratic veterans as possible and force Dr. Frankenstein to face the monster he stiched together out of lies.

That's why we couldn't afford to lose Hackett and why Hartmann is wrong.