Name, Baby, Name!!!

I think we as a nation can agree what issue means the most to us this election season...what in sam hill are Bristol Palin and Levi Johnston going to name their little bundle of joy come this December?!?

Seeing as how soon-to-be Hockey Grandma Sarah Palin preferred rather unusual choices for her own offspring, I'm guessing that young Bristol may follow in her footsteps, foregoing the typical "Michael" or "Amanda" in lieu of something a bit more...feisty.

(And before anyone gets all snippy at me for 'mocking' the Palin family, let me assure you, this is all in good fun...and I certainly don't consider myself 'better' than them - for God's sake, I'm named after a SEASON!!!)

As I know how busy the Palin family is at present moment, I thought I'd take some time out of my own hectic schedule to give them a helping hand, and have created my own list of suggestions for monikers of a unique persuasion.*

*I do not believe that the family will actually use any of these names.  However, if they do, I expect to be monetarily compensated. 

--'Sara Lee.'  Nobody doesn't like Sara Lee.  You can honor Grandma Sarah AND the best double negative ad slogan ever created, all at the same time!

--'501.'  Won't it be cute to call him "Levi's 501?"

--'Doritos.'  This is a sneaky way to make sure you can always bring your baby along with you to a party.  After all, no one's going to tell you that you can't bring Doritos!!

--'Bibliophile.'  Baby reads everything - just like Grandma!

--'Benihana.'  Works for either sex!  You can shorten it to "Ben" for a boy, or "Hana" for a girl - AND you showcase your appreciation for other cultures and ethnicities!

--'Caboodle.'  This one's a joke.  I just wanted to see if anyone remembered Caboodles.

--'Sharpay.'  There's no way in HELL that THIS one is already taken!!!  

--'Whammies.'  Imagine the fun you could have, running around your home screaming, "NO WHAMMIES!"  Then again, seeing as how you're teenagers, you probably don't get the reference.

--'Carhartt.'  Perhaps the baby could snag an early promotional endorsement and score free overalls for the entire fam!

--'Whippets.'  Like the dogs, not the drugs, you godless heathen!!!

--'Maytag.'  Baby will be "built strong to last long," just like Grandma's political career! 

--'Maverick.'  That James Garner sure is swell!

--'Baby.'  I always thought this would be a good idea...after all, no one would be confused as to whom you were addressing!  Until you have another baby, that is.

--'Crapper.'  You'll be paying homage to the legendary inventor of the flush toilet, and also acknowledging what you'll secretly call the baby until it's out of diapers anyway!

And last but not least...

--'Joe the Baby.'  Make sure it's legally listed that way on his birth certificate, otherwise it doesn't count!  Unless you name him Samuel Wurzelbacher, of course.

The Building Manager in the Seventh Circle of Hell

During my eight years (!) of residing in sunny Los Angeles, I have lived in ten different apartments.  Sadly, this is not an exaggeration, and I'm not sure how I managed to live in more than one apartment a year, but hey, shit happens.

Yes, sometimes shit happens.  And sometimes, a monkey picks up that shit to throw it at you, which then hits the proverbial fan on its way to ruining your favorite pair of Skechers.

(This is a dramatization of certain events which took place yesterday in my current place of residence.  The following is a slightly more realistic version.)

So I've been getting fat.  It's no secret - I've even posted a prior blog about it (Ode to my Size 4 Jeans).  No, I'm not obese.  But I need to start working out, period.  But I hate the gym.  And I have back problems which making jogging/running near impossible.  What's a girl to do?

I'll tell you what.  Whilst randomly paging through the desert of bland daytime television programming one day, I happened to stumble upon an infomercial.  Egad!  I was watching the dreaded infomercial, nearly as nefarious an act as accidentally tuning in to the Korean soap opera channel!!  And before you could say 'catatonic,' I was sucked in.

This particular infomercial was for a home exercise program called "Barry's Bootcamp."  It's pretty much what you're picturing...a vastly energetic dude in camo pants who is hyper-supportive (We're so PROUD of you!!  You're on your WAY!!) and whom you feel is hiding some deep, dark secret behind that manic I-wanna-see-you-sweat-til-you-barf smile.

So I asked for it for my birthday.

Lo and behold, ask and ye shall receive!  After a few days of looking at the box on my living room floor as I passed by on my way to the fridge and/or couch, I finally decided to rip it open.  I pulled out the resistance bands, inflated the exercise ball, and got to work.

Now, I've gotta tell ya, I'm not usually one to buy something off the ol' TV, nor am I one to buy into the crazy ideas they try to sell you on.  But I have to admit, camo-pants Barry has something going on.  I felt the difference after my very first workout, and I have continued to feel it each day since.  And the amazing thing is, the workouts are SHORT!  The entire routine is only 21 minutes long - 14 one-minute intensive exercises separated by 30 seconds of rest - you're done almost before you realize you've started!  It's about working SMARTER not HARDER!!  ALL THIS CAN BE YOURS!!  CALL NOW!!!!!

gasp    pant    gasp

Sorry folks.  I seemed to have hopped on the infomercial crazy train for a moment there.

And I've digressed from the story I wanted to tell.  Ahem.

So I was doing my home exercise routine yesterday when a knock sounded at my door.  I immediately knew who it would be - our building manager, who happens to live directly below us.  Sure enough, I opened the door to see his dour, disapproving face staring in at me through the protective barrier of the screen door.

He asked me if I was "exercising or something."  Panting and bathed in sweat, I motioned to my sneakers and gym shorts and said indeed I was.  He told me I had to stop.  "You can't do that.  We hear you downstairs and you wake baby."

Now, let me say right here and now that if I had been jumping up and down on their ceiling at 2 in the morning, or even 7, I would understand.  But this was 10 a.m., a perfectly reasonable time for me to be making a bit of noise - and considering I was only doing 14 minutes of exercise, very little of which involved any sort of noise at all (most of the exercises are squat, lunge, and resistance band-related), I felt I was perfectly within my rights as a paying renter to use my apartment as I saw fit.

But as I'm a fair person, I told him that I never intended to disturb their baby (actually their grand-baby), which is why I chose to exercise in the living room rather than one of the bedrooms.  He said, "Baby sleep in living room," so I said, "Okay, well then, would it be better if I did it in the bedroom?"  Reply:  "No.  You can't do it, you have to stop."

I started to get angry.  I told him that it was my home and that I had the right to exercise in it, particularly since I was barely making noise.  He told me I was being inconsiderate, and I almost inconsiderately punched him in his stupid face. I'll show you inconsiderate, you angry little bastard.

Instead, I once again tried to be the bigger person, and told him that the exercise was necessary for my health, therefore was there a better TIME at which I could do it, so as not to wake the baby?  Once again, I got the same reply:  "No.  You stop now.  No more."

I tried to continue the conversation, at which point he simply turned and WALKED AWAY.  In the middle of my sentence.  I trailed off, looking at his departing back in disbelief.  Then the coup de grace - he threw back over his shoulder, "We never USED to have problem before."

Meaning he didn't have this problem before I moved in with my boyfriend.  Meaning I'm a problem.  Meaning ever since I moved in (almost six months ago, mind you), I've been a big ol' headache in one way or another - he was probably referring not only to the recent noise, but also to the time I called him when our hot water stopped working.  What an awful tenant - it's hard to believe I've never had any problems at ANY of my nine other apartments.

Enough steam was coming out of my ears that I probably could've cooked a bunch of broccoli on top of my head.  I did my best not to slam the door shut.

The unfairness of it all - especially being called 'inconsiderate' when I was attempting to reach out halfway to find a solution that would work for both of us - just GRATED on me.  I was SEETHING inside.  And I needed an outlet.

So I pushed play and finished off my exercise program for the day...though I was sure to stay whisper quiet about the goddamn thing.

I was supposed to do my workout again today.  Instead, I'm sitting here at my desk, in full exercise costume, hesitating to start for fear I'll hear another knock at my door.  And that pisses me off.  

We're not having loud, raucous parties.  We don't crank the TV up to ridiculous decibels.  We pay our rent on time each and every month.  We don't complain when the manager neglects to fix our bathroom floor time and time again, so that a year later, the ancient floor tiles are completely shattered and the plywood is exposed.

No, we're meek, quiet, probably OVERLY considerate tenants.  Which makes the whole situation seem just that more unfair.

So we're gonna move.  We've been planning it for a long time anyway, for many reasons, but this was kind of the final straw and the camel is laid out, folks.

Our apartment manager can kiss my fat-but-trying-to-get-skinny-again ass.  And I'm sure that Barry would be proud of me for saying so.

'The View' of a bigot

Having been sick these past two weeks, I've found myself on the couch watching daytime television programming for the first time since my college roommate suckered me into "Days of Our Lives" the three months during which I didn't have a Tuesday 1pm class.

This time around, however, I'm not watching soap operas...or at least, not in the typical sense.  I watch morning talk shows, travel documentaries, oodles of CNN (Jack Cafferty is my favorite curmudgeon), and of course, the gab-rific 'The View.'

Being a left-minded gal, I tend to find Elisabeth Hasselbeck as grating as the time my next-door neighbor left town and forgot to turn her alarm clock off.  Being woken up at 5 in the morning by someone else's alarm is perhaps only slightly less annoying than having to hear it continuously for the next six hours until it finally reaches automatic shut-off.

What drives me bat-caca-crazy about this woman is not the fact that she's a staunch Republican.  I have many right wing friends, and lately we've been having a heck of a time getting into political scuffles via email forums, which we all find invigorating and thought provoking.  I enjoy hearing from people whose thoughts differ from my own.  I'll argue the issues all to hell, but that doesn't mean I don't want to hear the other side.

Elisabeth Hasselbeck takes it to a whole new level.  Well, the level isn't entirely new, seeing as how it was birthed by Fox News several years back...but it's a level which I find disturbing and absolutely disgusting.  It's bigotry.

Bigot: A person obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices.

---Merriam-Webster Dictionary

As Mrs. Hasselbeck stumps for McCain/Palin both on 'The View' and off, she makes one thing abundantly clear - she's dead set in her beliefs and she doesn't want to hear it any other way.  Are the other women on the show vocal in their thoughts?  Absolutely.  But they rarely let those thoughts sweep them up in an emotional tidal wave like Hasselbeck does on a regular basis.  There is a difference between passion and hysterics.  Each day I watch, Lizzie either goes on the attack - and I feel like she's on the verge of throwing a punch - or else she goes on the defensive - and I feel like she's on the verge of breaking into tears.

I totally believe that we should all fight for what we believe in.  But in a forum like this, a daytime television round-table discussion show, shouldn't we be talking before we start yelling?  There's no discussion with Hasselbeck. There is no debate.  There is her way or the highway.  

She refuses to listen.  Even when the other ladies are trying to be rational, trying to ask her calmly about her beliefs, or questioning the rationality behind them, she immediately jumps to her emotional cannons and begins to fire.

There have been rumors of late that Elisabeth Hasselbeck is considering leaving 'The View' in search of greener pastures over at - who could've guessed it? - Fox News.  An inside source claimed that she felt she was being 'picked on' at the View, and that she wasn't being allowed equal and fair time to express her side of the issues.

She may even be right. I do think the show tends to lean to the left.  But if her 'side' (meaning the right-wing policies she embraces) doesn't get equal time, there's no one to blame but Hasselbeck herself.  I firmly believe that another more level-headed, less prone to emotional outbursts, intelligent conservative female could hold Hasselbeck's position and get those opinions out in a reasonable fashion that the other hosts could tolerate.

During a recent show, Hasselbeck even went so far as to ask why they always had to talk about Sarah Palin.  Why?  Isn't it painfully obvious why we've ALL been talking about Sarah Palin?  Because before last month, none of us had a clue who the hell this woman WAS.  And she's unique!  She is the only woman on the big ticket, and only the second woman in U.S. history to run for the office of Vice President.  Isn't this enough reason for us to be talking about her?  How the hell else are we supposed to form any sort of opinion about her, and figure out if this is a person we'd like to see as the nation's number two?

In the interest of keeping this post from becoming a novella, I'll stop there.  But let me propose this peace treaty for the ladies of 'The View': Elisabeth, Lizzie dearest, please stop the emotional outbursts and keep it to rational conversation, and perhaps the other hens will see fit to stop pecking you so much and let you have your time.

Hearing both sides of an argument is important.  But if you're going to scream at me in my right ear until I'm deaf, all I'm gonna be able to hear is what's coming in from the left.

Darn it all, I just gotta sit down and throw together a gosh darn blog, by golly!

Hopefully, you've all been following the political race this season...I'm not sure how you could avoid it, quite frankly.  It's like the newest reality television hit.  I'm willing to bet that whichever ticket loses the presidential election, you'll find the vice presidential might-have-been on 'Dancing with the Stars' next fall.

And I think we can all agree that while Joe Biden might have a great set of gams, we'd all much rather see Sarah Palin do the cha-cha, even if it's not for the same reasons.

I'll be the first to admit that Mrs. Palin did a fine job in the vice presidential debate last night.  As many pundits are saying, she certainly did exceed expectations...those expectations being that she would finish the job of imploding the Republican ticket with her rambling, incoherent anti-answers and lack of political knowledge.

So yes.  She succeeded in appearing to be well-versed in political talking points while not coming across as lost or meandering.  What she did come across as, however, is insultingly folksy and falsely charming.

Let me assure you, I come from a very 'folksy' background myself.  I grew up in a tiny town (technically deemed a village) in rural mid-Michigan, a town which has an official population of 882, as cited by the U.S. Census Bureau in 2000 - five years AFTER I graduated high school and moved away.

When I was growing up there, there wasn't much to do outside of school sports.  You had to drive 20-30 minutes to get to the nearest 4-screen movie theatre (where I had my first job) and half again as far to reach a run-down shopping mall in Flint.

I literally grew up in a barn.  A pole-barn.  OK, I didn't spend all of my formative years there, just a few whilst my stepfather built a more typical house on our property.  Property which was in the middle of a dense woods - I had to be driven almost two miles to my bus stop every morning.

I knew everyone in my high school, no matter what grade they were in.  I knew a lot of kids who went out cow-tipping and snipe-hunting.  We all wore clothes five years behind the fashion trend.

And even today, being one of the 'elitists' living in Los Angeles, trying to make a living in the entertainment industry, I'm still very close to my mother, an avid outdoorswoman who enjoys activities such as snowshoeing and hunting, but who also writes for a - gasp! - newspaper.

I'm rambling.  What does all this have to do with Sarah Palin?

I'll tell you what.  I come from just as 'common' a background as Mrs. Palin, if not arguably more so.  As does my mother, who is closer in age to the governor than I am.  And yet neither of us employ this "golly gee" and "doggone it" verbiage that the erstwhile vice presidential candidate seems to cherish.

I'm a regular Jane.  I work hard to make a living.  I'm lower middle class.  But I don't need to be cajoled as if I'm a simple-minded 'hick,' what with all the cutesy 'Darn it all!'s.  I felt talked down to.  You're probably asking, 'But what about Biden?  With all of his high-falutin Washington demagoguery, didn't you feel belittled?'

My answer is, quite the opposite!  I like when someone speaks to me in an intelligent manner.  I like feeling as if I'm learning something from them.  And seeing as how these two people are running for the number two position in the nation, with the possibility of ascending to numero uno, I would certainly HOPE to GOD that they displayed a high level of intellect.  I'd LIKE for someone smarter than me to be in the White House! For a change.

And what got to me more than all of the Pollyanna colloquialisms was the incessant winking. UGH!!  I was writhing, I was so annoyed!  If a woman winks at me that often, I know that either she's being condescending to me, or else I'm in the wrong bar.

Clearly, I'm voting Democrat this November.  Was my mind changed by this debate?  Absolutely not.  I was already an Obama girl, though not one with a tacky You Tube video.  But Joe Biden did win me over.  I didn't really know much about him before last night, and hadn't seen him speak very often. I found him to be a smart dude with a direct way of speaking, a man who knows where he stands and isn't afraid to get a little emotional when talking about his family.

A candidate who reeks of being - shall I dare say it? - truly genuine.

Unlike some hockey moms I know.