Blogging The Debate (Drunk And Stoned)

Okay, I give up: Who was the silver-haired geezer blurting shit out to no one in particular? Is he a candidate, or did he just wander in from the street like it's open mic night at Laugh-A-Lot's in Des Moines? He was going off on Obama about $136,000 dollars in campaign funds from some shady corporation or something. He was hysterical. He brought just the right amount of surrealism and watching your grandpa listen to the radio and talking to it to the festivities. Highly reminiscent of Ross Perot's running mate, who's now dead.

I like Bill Richardson. He seems sincere, insofar as that's even possible given the circumstances.

Obama is nearly unflappable. Very quick on his feet, and a great speaker. Add the fact that he's the whitest candidate amongst all of them, and I smell an Obama/Clinton (Bill) ticket.

Even though Joe Biden is an asshole, at least he's also an arrogant dumbass who really never says anything pertinent to the questions asked. Still, being a dickhead is a full-time job, so I'm giving him the deficit of the bout.

Last night, blazing on weed, Hilary looked presidential. (Okay, me blazing, Hilary presidential.) She also looked like she was in the middle of anaphylactic shock. How much makeup does one need for high definition TV? It made me hungry for pancakes.

That old dude was hilarious! Man!

John Edwards is really hard to take seriously. There's an excellent expose in this month's Esquire. Peals back the veneer on a lot of his wooden persona. Too bad his wife's about 5 times smarter than he is.

Dennis Kucinich. How can you not love this guy? He's like this woodland creature who just stumbled out of the enchanted forest to tell people exactly what they don't want to hear, namely, the truth. He can do this, obviously, only because there's no way in hell this country elects an alien space pod-dweller from another planet in outer space president. Yet. It may have been the mary jane talking, but at one point, when the candidates were asked how they'd handle Iraq as president, he essentially said he'd end the war before he was president by getting congress to stop funding the war. Which really is the only realistic and practical reason for so-called democrats to do so. We're there for a very long time no matter the party of the '08 leader of the free world.

[Taco Bell!]

Something something something.

I liked the scary part when the snowman wanted to know how his child was going to survive the inevitable global warming catastrophe. Really brought a huge amount of perspective to an otherwise rarely mentioned topic. Then the 2 hilljack poseurs from Tennessee dropped the G-bomb, and you would've thought Anderson Cooper had ripped one right there and then what with all the uncomfortable fumbling around onstage. Which is exactly what Anderson Cooper does best, i.e., fumbling around uncomfortably onstage. And blowing celebrity interviews with his own incompetence. And writing really bad prose about New Orleans. And poor journalism. He's a veritable Renaissance Man of mediocrity.

Who's this Dodd cat? He looked afraid of all the other candidates, like they were going to gang up on him for whatever reason. (Projected paranoia on my part? You tell me.)

I thought the audience did an excellent job of clapping inappropriately at the most imperfect times. It was like they weren't sure if they were allowed to display either their displeasure or their approval without some sort of aural disclaimer. Not too loud, not too long. Like a David Cross album.

I'm forgetting someone. Hmm...

Seriously, it would be hilarious to have that crazy old dude as president. He'd get up there to do The State Of The Union Speech and just start laying into congress about the fact that it's hard to justify giving yourself a raise when your job consists almost precisely of creating laws under which you don't have to live. Dream job level shit.

Honestly, E.T. over there may as well have said, "Citizens of Planet Earth, I mean America: Man has survived hitherto because he was too ignorant to know how to realize his wishes. Now that he can realize them, he must either change them, or perish. That is all."

I'd say, after all the youtube spittle settled, it's a photo finish between Hilary and Obama, with Obama by a nose.

Finally, some pretty good questions, some pretty bad questions, some excellent questions, and some technically retarded questions. But ain't that just America right there for ya? Land of the home, free of the brave, &c., and things of that nature?

(Clooney/Depp in 2012!)

[Full disclosure: I was able to watch the debate on CNN because I was at the one that got away's loft. I left any misspellings of names, and the william carlos williams quote is from memory, so I apologize if I fucked it up.]