A Billy Idol Christmas

I heard that Billy Idol performed at the recent Lollapalooza corporate rock fest. For the longest time I’ve had an idea for him. I should have gone to the concert on the 100 degree Sunday and pitched it -- The Billy Idol Christmas Album.

If ever there was someone who captures the true spirit of the holiday -- which is to say the crass commercialism and cheese factor -- it’s Idol.

As it is almost being August, there’s still time for him to have it in stores before Thanksgiving. I mean, come on, it’s a freaking Billy Idol album. How hard can that be to record?

Besides, all he has to do is adapt his old tunes -- they work perfectly. Here’s the track list:

1. Claus Without A Face

2. Dancing With My Elves

3. White Christmas (Hey little sister, who’s your Santa Claus?)

4. Hot In the Chimney

5. Rebel Yule

6. To Be A Reindeer

7. Flesh for Fat Santa

8. Mony Mony (eggnog mix)


You would think Weird Al woulda done this by now.

Crunk out the newspapers

I’m not always proud to admit it, but I work for a newspaper. In this business, there’s quite a bit of navel gazing and self-analysis -- and ill-conceived attempts to get more people to read papers again.

This means there are seminars hosted by colleges, think tanks, and/or marketing groups which somehow are supposed to lead us out of our circulation ruts.

As the world, or at least this part of it, is obsessed with youth, most of the time it’s about how to get younger readers.

Such is how the world winds up with those Red papers in Chicago -- aimed at that all important pain-in-the-ass 18-35 demographic. Because it’s really important to get people who find so-called reality TV entertaining to read your paper (cuz they must be so fucking stupid they’ll buy anything advertised).

An aside: Have you seen MTV’s Laguna Beach? No wonder radical Muslims hate us. I watched 15 minutes and I wanted to blow something up (ONLY JOKING OF COURSE, MR. NSA DUDE WHO MONITORS THE WEB). It’s like, about these totally hot high school seniors, and like the hot guys and like everyone is blonde and like you know it’s so awesome to be rich and in high school and have plastic surgery looks and everything handed to you on a silver platter and like all you can fucking ever talk about is dating.

Example of how papers are trying: We recently ran an AP story that I wouldn’t even force the worst guy at Git-Mo to have to read. A 22-year-old wrote a first person account of how to set up your own pod cast on the Net. It read like a goddamn cake recipe.
Most newspapers are run by and for white people, most of whom were hopelessly out of it from the start, so the above is what they think is edgy.

But I say, if they want to go that route, why not embrace hip-hop culture instead of dumbass pretty white people.

Joking around at work we thought a crunk version of our paper would be fresh fly, Freddie. We even gave all the towns new names:

Aurora - A-Town, where the badasses all come from

Elgin -- E-Town, where the A-Town wannabes are

West Dundee - the WD

East Dundee - E to the D

Hampshire - Hzzzhire

Gilberts - the G

Naperville -- Vanilla Village or NPV

Carpentersville -- Da Ville

Hoffman Estates -- h’states

Schaumburg -- Blingburg

It’s a start, homes.

It's too damn hot

Illinois turned into Arizona this summer.

It hasn’t rained but a half inch since June. Leaves are falling off trees, which are going into panic mode. Lawns are brown, but for those of the needlessly vain type who waste water to impress no one but themselves. The river is more like a long puddle: ducks stand in it instead of swim.

It’s enough to make you believe the hype about global warming. That, and the Nightline the other evening where biologists gave tours of the cloud forest in Costa Rica where animals that were plentiful 15-20 years ago have just plain vanished.

Sometimes it feels like we’re just one 100-degree day away here from some sort of made-for-TV- style I-told-you-so disaster starring Dennis Quaid and Brian Dennehy.

The power will go out for days. Food and old folks will spoil. Gas will be $6 a gallon. People in Hummers will still be assholes to the bitter end.

But it’s hard to bitch when its 120 in Iraq and you hear reports that walking outdoors there your clothes get so hot it feels like you put them under the iron then threw them on.

And you do wonder how big cities coped with hot weather 100 years ago. Imagine the collective stench of New York or Chicago.

Still, this weather makes me uneasy.

I find it hard to sleep. Air conditioning and fans bug me -- the white noise, mostly, and that I’m cheap and am dreading the electric bill, and that it really does seem like a waste of energy.

No way in hell I’m walking around without a shirt. I am too fat for that, and feel like a candle made of beef tallow.

And it’s not even August. Come September, I'll be whining about Christmas decorations being up.

I should live in a bubble. Or my own personal mall.

Give Karl Rove what he deserves: pants him

Karl Rove looks like the little fucker in middle and high school who figured out how to get the dumb jocks to do his bidding.

Strike that. Jocks gave him wedgies. He was worse than the jock sniffer. He was Eddie Haskell.

Nah. Eddie wanted chicks and beer. I don’t see sex and booze being high up on Karl’s list of teen wants and needs.

He was the little weasel who was happy to get somebody elected to student council but never ran himself. How creepy to want to be the guy behind the guy -- so to speak.

It’s admitting, hey I’m not pretty enough. I’m too fat. I’m asexual and beat off a lot. But I am happy to make you happy. Maybe I can get your leftovers.

Besides, you cute kids just don’t know how to do the dirty work. Most of you are too stupid to wheel and deal. You only think you are in charge. Just don’t have the jocks give me another wedgie.

And Washington is nothing if not high school with tax payer money, especially these days.

DC reporters: Christ, they are the kids who write about the kids in student council. That is soooo uncool, even more uncool than Karl. They are ass-kissers plain and simple.

In short, that is why normal people don’t want to get involved in politics and often don’t vote. Who but the dysfunctional want to remain in high school mode?

Geeks, indeed, do rule. Unfortunately, it’s this type of geek, the teacher’s pet, apple polishing, please the parents, be mean to the new kids kind.

Nothing new about it. Ain’t that America?

I’m gonna go get a fake ID to buy beer, then smoke with the stoners. Suddenly, they seem like the sensible ones.

I'm a reporter and I am as mad as heck and won't take it anymore, darn it!

Per their request for comments, I sent the following to the little journalism club
which I joined. I thought it would be more like the Mousketeers, or at least involve
booze, but their stuff is usually for the people who work in Chicago as it starts
at 5 p.m. on weekdays.

Anyway, they are all in a tither about what Robert Novak hath wrought (though his name rarely comes up). Here goes:

I know its hard these days to come up with a novel way to voice and opinion and/or to get that opinion noticed. But somehow the SPJ's call in an e-mail to "Do SOMETHING Dart It!" and for a moment of silence for our potentially imprisoned (and better paid) comrades at the big boy papers all seems so soft.

Granted the rock stars were all busy with Live 8 and pretty much all the wrist band colors are taken. But couldn't the group come up with something with a little more punch to it, darn it?! I mean you can even use the word suck in the high and mighty Tribune these days.

And this all sucks like a Dirt Devil.

Speaking of Satan and deals made with, how come Robert Novak seems to be getting off rather lightly in this matter? How come journalist groups aren't publicly expressing more dismay about what he did and how it led to what it did?

Ethically speaking, why did Novak feel beholden to out a spy during wartime? I don't write everything everybody tells me. Now my excuse might be just plain laziness -- and I don't know anybody in the White House to tempt me -- but I think I use judgment sometimes, too.

You know if a lefty did what Novak and his source did, right wing radio and TV and pundits would be calling for their heads, darn it. No moments of silence there, just lots of shouting about treason.

Maybe, just maybe, this affair will snap the Washington press corpse (pun intended) out of its somnabulance.

Sure Saddam was an awful despot and something needed to be done. Letting an administration get away with a baloney excuse to start the ball rolling -- that's just rolling over to have your belly patted.

And who is surprised Karl Rove is involved with the Plame affair? Didn't cranky old lefty windbag Al Franken rant and rave about this? Where were other reporters trying to beat Pat Fitzgerald to the story?

Sure, I'm not too happy about a reporter going to jail for refusing to reveal her source. But there are plenty of things to be unhappy about in this fine mess.

Yours truly,

a guy in the suburbs who happens to be a reporter, darn it

Slouching towards Bethlehem: A heathen's view

Just when it looked like pop stars had ended poverty (to say nothing of good music) along comes that party-pooper Osama and his goons to bring us back to reality - and really real reality TV.

Which sounds like something Tony Blair said today, something to the effect that the goal of terrorists is to inflict terror, but we can’t let them terrorize us. My, Bush really is rubbing off on him.

Safety is a myth in an unsafe world. That’s why we have insurance policies. That’s why it does no good to become afraid instead of taking your head out of your ass and getting vigilant and learning about the nation and the world.

And I’m sorry if I sound glib, because I’m not trying to be -- my sarcasm masks an increased annoyance, impetulance, anger, frustration (pick your own damn adjective) that comes with a day like today, when humanity amplifies its stupidity. Sorry, Elvis Costello, let the angels wear your red shoes -- I can’t be amused and am back to being disgusted.

I can’t blame Blair for being articulate. He’s dealing with an equally inept with language enemy. Please, tell me exactly what the fuck it is these fundamentalists want?

I just watched Nightline (praise be Ted Koppel is still on the air at times like these, when the rest of the media gets all maudlin and amps up the fear factor). Three experts tried to explain it to dumb-ass me, and I am still not sure what the assholes want -- besides the virgins in heaven, if that’s even true. Cuz if it is, just move Guantanamo to Reno and be done with it.

What I got it there is a pit of justification from which come their excuses, and the bad guys wanting us out of Arab lands so they can set up some sort of Kingdom of a 14th Century Allah.

(And boy, does God/Allah/whatever have writer’s block, dontcha think? I mean he hasn’t come out with a new book in 2,000 years.)

For men who apparently want to go way, way back to the good old days, they sure like to get attention. Isn’t drawing attention to yourself, just for the sake of attention, some sort of sin, in any faith? Who knew radical Muslims had something in common with Paris Hilton?

And exactly how do they win a war on terrorism? Do they take over America? Do they get their own country?

Since most of the Middle East is desert, if they don’t want to have anything to do with us, once we figure out how not to burn fossil fuel, what do they do for income?

I read where Afghanis were praying at a shrine to Taliban martyrs and kissing American ass the next. In this looking glass world, it makes perfect sense. If the attacks hadn’t happened the West really wouldn’t give a shit about that ass backwards nation. So the martyrs brought the attention and maybe a sliver of hope of some sort of improvement.

Would we be paying this level of attention to the Middle East’s general fucked up-ness (where are so-called buddies harbor terrorists, oppress women and run dictatorships - not anything like that bastard Saddam, of course) if it weren’t for the cave dweller? (And man, don’t you wish he woulda got laid more when he was in school in England?)

I’m just rambling. That’s what you do on a day like today. It’s what the government has been doing , even in the wake of 9-11 - the most over-fucking used phrase ever.

But hey, we got a reporter in jail for not revealing her source for a story she never wrote. Meanwhile the weasel who wrote the piece in question - Robert Novak (who looks like Underdog’s nemesis Simon Bar Sinister) who outed a spy DURING WARTIME, apparently as a political favor to get back at her husband for speaking out against Bush’s justification for war - the WMDS, remember?

And the journalism club I belong to sends me an e-mail about this with the header that says DO SOMETHING, Darn It! Darn it?! And the mailing before it suggested we all stand for a moment of silence (perhaps inspired by that Jesus-wannabe Bono) in honor of our jailed camarade. For fuck’s sake! Journalists are such pussies.

We got a Patriot Act, where the government can secretly look at what library books you have checked out, but the same government has done little to protect most of the infrastructure, aside from the window dressing at airports.

We got reality TV shows and newspapers that worry about how unsafe it is to swim in retention ponds and rising housing prices, and gas heading toward $3 a gallon.

We got a war going on that costs $1 billion a week, where much of the work is outsourced.

We got celebrities, who at least brought attention to an issue WITHOUT A GODDAMN BOMB however naive they may be. But come on! I know you have to dumb things down for Empty Vee, but do they really think that if all debt were erased tomorrow for Africa, that would be the jump start the continent needs? Centuries of shit just washed away with money.

We got people who don’t like Western policies and don’t like the 21st century, and don’t like women, and don’t like gays and don’t like anyone who is different. Which is to say, how do you win a war on Ignorance, stupidity, superstition and greed?

And we humans seem to need an enemy -- there’s been nary a moment in my lifetime when it hasn’t been so.

And, like it or not, freedom comes with risks.

Angry American Tim McVeigh bombed a courthouse and there probably wasn’t any way to stop him.

In Elgin, Illinois, an average town if there ever was, a guy walked into a bar, shot more than a dozen people and killed two men. Not for political reasons. He was nuts.

The bar is still open. The courthouse is rebuilt.

Just be glad it's still hard to find plutonium.