brunobaby

Packed flat and ready for assembly.

...but not on me. At least not this round.

My company had "unprecedented" layoffs today. The management is calling a big meeting first thing tomorrow morning for the survivors. I'm going to try to get a good night's sleep; this is one time I don't want to push my luck being late.

P.S. The guy upstairs sounds like he's bowling.

Not the next president's, but mine.

I finally, finally heard back from the landlord about installing new kitchen cabinets. He said I'd have to sign a rider increasing my rent each month by a fraction of the cost of the cabinets. This increase would be in place for as long as I would be in the apartment. Since I'm a New Yorker, let's face it: It means this would be in place for the rest of my life.

I did some basic math and discovered that by the time they cart me off to the home for the aged, I will have laid out the price of a Mercedes for some fecockteh cabinets.

I can, however, hire somebody and buy the cabinets myself. It's a small wall and the cabinets themselves would be under two thousand bucks, then another couple of thousand for the labor. The drawback to this is that you're liable for any damages that occur to the building while the cabinets are being installed. It's an old building, and if you hammer something in 5B, the ceiling cracks in 2C.

I can rig something up with free-standing cabinets. It's the one over the sink that bugs me. It's solid wood, which is great, but due to the warpage that you get in an old tenement, the door no longer closes and the shelves sag. So one alternative that I'll work on in the next few days is finding a carpenter to at least take that cabinet down, and maybe build another one conforming to the warpage. Or just take it down, and be really minimalistic.

Not much time to write more than a smart remark or two on other people's blogs this week. Work's been knocking me out, but at least it's there.

...because I found myself agreeing with Frank Rich:

But there’s a steady unnerving undertone to Palin’s utterances, a consistent message of hubristic self-confidence and hyper-ambition. She wants to be president, she thinks she can be president, she thinks she will be president. And perhaps soon.

In other words, when it comes to ambition, Palin's no Danielle Quayle; she's Chick Nixon.

On a related note, a trailer for Sarah Palin's life as a Disney movie:




This one has professional production values and everything, folks! Enjoy.

When I turned on NY1 this morning, Pat Kiernan was saying "Sarah Palin held her own" about every five minutes. By the time I'd finished my breakfast, I'd already run out of snappy comebacks like "I bet a lot of guys want to hold it, too" and "I'm holding mine right now."


Roger Clark was at the Staten Island Ferry Terminal asking commuters who they'd thought had won the debate; Staten Island being the only one of the five boroughs where you have a chance of finding more than one McCain supporter. Even the Obama supporters thought Palin had done well, meaning she didn't crash and burn and cause pain for anyone watching her.


The Veep debate wasn't a game-changer or a mind-changer for anyone asked. And since I've made up my mind already, I'm just trying to detach myself from the partisan rancor that's been flying around and enjoy the rest of the race for historical value. And to make comparisons with show business, and to make jokes. It's either that or hide under the kitchen table for the next 30 days like that weird girl in "Moonchildren."

Palin gave a good performance last night, but her material is kinda hackneyed (same old conservative talking points) and she wasn't off-book--kept looking at her notes. People like her, which was good for Reagan, and she even threw in a little Reagan reference with "There you go again."

Some conservative bloggers and commenters are already planning her future, accepting that this particular election is going to go to Obama. One thing many of us can agree on, left and right, is that she's iconic, going to be around for a while and forty years from now an elderly Rick Perlstein will be writing an in-depth biography of her.

Meanwhile, if anybody wants to take my predictions seriously, here's a disclaimer: Three years ago I predicted that Anthony Weiner was going to be our next mayor here in NYC. This week, it was announced that Mike Bloomberg will be seeking a third term if the city council votes to extend term limits.

If you're an old person like me, this video will remind you of that "Buy The World A Coke" commercial from the early '70s.

I always thought it was too treacly and preferred the Mr. Mike version from the National Lampoon:

I'd like to give the world a hug,
And tell it jokes and stuff
Then pull its pants down to its shoes
And chase it through the rough.

I'm voting Democratic, but the last mania I had was for the Monkees.

Alternately, conservative columnist Kathleen Parker recently criticized McCain's choice of Sarah Palin, and got a response that would be startling to anyone who doesn't read political blogs:

The emotional pitch of many comments suggests an overinvestment
in Palin as "one of us."

Hey, no excrement, Holmes.

But I'm not, and neither is Sideways Mencken, who's outlined why.

He even uses the word "Woodshed," which I've used recently, so you know this has to be good.