No One Was Watching

I'm one fourth French, which has been a real cross for me to endure. My mother's relatives such as they are drink way too much, throw things at each other, and make sarcastic remarks about your most vulnerable traits. To note: "Your ass is too big for your body, he he! It looks like an ass of an African person!" Let me tell you, this sounds even better in a combination of broken English and French. Hey, I already went through that torture in junior high school! So it surprises me not at all that lots of French people love Jerry Lewis who so far as I can tell is a talentless hack who despite getting sicker and more bloated every year, insisted on that godforsaken depressing marathon with those poor kids afflicted with Muscular Dystrophy. Must they be inflicted with him as well?!

But I digress. Recently, he called someone an "illiterate fag" and used the work fuck on air. I'm not so worried about the last offense -- I'm guessing hearing the word fuck is the least of Jerry's Kids' problems. But the word fag is one of those that always sets people off. We used it a lot in the eighties, along with queer, as in "That's so queer!" It wasn't directed at gay people, per se, and neither was the word fag, but I never could get behind it. A large portion of my friends in those days were closeted gay men, and it broke my heart when they'd use it to prove they weren't, trying to pass. And I can still see straight guys engaged in their homoerotic raptures, hitting each other and calling each other fags. They loved each other, you see, and had no other way to express it. But I can't really defend old Jerry. I think he was drunk and that no one was watching. But a camera caught him as cameras are want to do in this age. He also said that women comics irritated him in 2000; he looked at them "as producing baby machines." I'm not politically correct in the least, but come on! I suppose the telethon will continue with that drunken asshole at the helm. By definition a telethon goes on and on, of course, way past the point of reason and there's something a little too accurate in the definition this year.

Michelle's Spell of the Day
“My weaknesses... I wish I could come up with something. I'd probably have the same pause if you asked me what my strengths are. Maybe they're the same thing.” Al Pacino

Cocktail Hour
Drinking short story collection suggestion: The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel Amy Hempel

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy birthday to my dear friend Karen! Here's to the happiest day ever!