mostly vegas

Watched most of the Nevada debates, kept getting phone calls I had to take about the auditions tomorrow. Missed some stuff, probably the most important exchanges.

I hope so, anyway.

The whole thing felt like standing in the lobby of a swanky hotel uptown, watching two elegant, very well-dressed society matrons politely but insistently elbowing each other out of the way while they speed up, carefully, to catch the same cab. They can't openly run or scratch or tackle one another, but they both really fucking want that cab.

Edwards was just the loud out-of-towner shouting "Taxi!" facing in the wrong direction.

Theater business first, you can read this and if you don't give a fuck about the future of our Republic, then you can zip off and watch your porn or whatever it is you do.

Still need people for the Overlord auditions tomorrow, or at this point, today. Have slots between 3 and 5 and 6 and 8.

Just come by. 3-5 at the Kraine, 6-8 down at the Ohio. Refer to previous post for breakdown. Call me if you're coming, if you don't know me, I'm not that hard to get to. Call someone who knows me, insist that they give you my number.

Now.

Some politics.

First, here are the banners we should be seeing:

Obama: Change You Can Believe In (meaning Hilary is a Liar)
Clinton: Ready for Change (meaning Barack is a Child)
Edwards: Spare Some Change? (meaning I am so Fucked, VP again? Pleeeeeaazzze?)

Don't mean to laugh at John, miracles happen and he's probably, deep down, not a complete Southern-fried fraud. But.

What I saw on the TV gave me a lot of enormously needed hope that one of those motherfuckers is going to win in November.

Really liked Clinton's coining of "green-color" jobs. Never heard that before. Like it.

But when they asked the candidates to cop to their own "strengths and weaknesses", I think the field became clear. And again, I'm a confessed Obama man, but still.

Edwards was just:

I'm a fighting bastard! I fight! I fought on the fucking playground, man! I fought before I thought a blessed thing in my poor-boy head! Fight! I'm Truman! How about that? Truman, goddamnit!

And everyone's just like,

Sure, John. Probably true. But then you went on to make a zillion dollars, sit on your rich white ass and at some point decide that politics is where the real game is at. Not buying it.

Obama was, as he usually is when he's relaxed, clear, human and funny. He said his strength is bringing people with different views or backgrounds together to solve a common problem and his weakness was organization, saying he tells his staff:

Don't hand me a piece of paper until two minutes before I need it. Otherwise, I'll lose it.

Drawing one of many Obama laughs from the crowd.

Senator Clinton went last in this round, and she broke my heart with her answer because, as previously confessed in a previous post, I love this person. She spoke beautifully and eloquently and the only problem was that she sounded like she was the spokesperson for a very good and well-established foundation. She sounded like she was the American Cancer Society or something. It was all true and lovely, but it was so completely impersonal. And then, foolishly, foolishly, she tried to take Obama's answer and compare him to the Idiot. It must have felt like the right thing to do in the moment, again, they're so carefully trying to fight each other, but it went nowhere. It was like a half-hearted lob that Barack just crushed back to her.

Here's a simple, casual thing that happened. In response to a question, Obama is talking about energy policy and he says,

...one thing I know about Nevada, folks got a lot of sun here."

Drawing another laugh. Mostly because of the phrasing. Most folks sitting out there are thinking,

Sounds like my brother-in-law. Or my old high-school buddy. Or me, actually. He's a Senator?

All of which is to say, Clinton is starting to look like the best VP candidate in modern memory. Experienced, smart, a party loyalist, ready to fight, knows where all the bodies are buried, can rouse the base and, as she keeps saying, ready to take the reins from Day One.

Have to admit, John had me with his heartfelt and insistent call out to the 200,000 veterans sleeping right now, as I type this and as you read this, doesn't matter what the time gap between those two events is, the 200,000 (which is a conservative estimate, no real way to count these guys), veterans, folks who volunteered for the armed forces, who are right now sleeping under bridges and on grates in this Great Land.

I've done that, slept in those places, with those guys, years ago and voluntarily as a young white kid looking for adventure. I slept and woke and scrounged for food with those guys he's talking about (and he's the only one talking about them) and believe me now, if you're ever going to believe me, it's a fucking crime that's going on. A crime, literally, like someone should serve time for doing this to another person, sit in a prison cell for doing that to a guy who volunteered to take a bullet and/or kill a stranger to protect the United States of America.

I got close to two guys up in Alaska years ago, Steve and Dave. Both vets, Vietnam vintage, both drunks. Both ready and prepared to die on the streets, probably of hypothermia, possibly of some violent stupidity. Neither one of them was David Halberstram or Wesley Clark. They were hungry, addicted, opportunistic, generous people I ran into. But they were both American citizens who served in the armed forces and it was their experience in the armed forces that shaped and scarred them and made them pretty much useless to society for the rest of their days. And society gave them back nothing. Our government gave them back nothing. Dave got a check for 400 bucks a month. Which we all went through in about three days up in Ketchikan in the summer of 87.

So, a nod to Senator Edwards. That poor boy made good, no question, and he's saying the right things.

But I feel something else going on around here.

More later on the Democratic field's chickenshit response to the Second Amendment argument.

Please, dear god, if you're still reading, come by and audition for me tomorrow.

Need to see some lovely young actors.

Need it.