Second Half

Lookit the pretty flowers I got from my dear four-legged friend!

Another dear friend made a valiant attempt to address a profound gap in my cultural literacy by giving me this.

I gave myself these. And some friends and I went here to eat pizza and drink life-sustaining red wine.

So all in all, a good (birth)day. Now ... onto the second half...

I'm giving up TV news and pundit shows -- cable, network, and otherwise -- in July and August. Waking up and screaming at Joe Scarborough is not good for me. It counteracts the health benefits of the aforementioned red wine, for one thing. It's also pointless. The stuff on the show is, as a good friend likes to remind me every time he witnesses me work myself into paroxysms of rage, "noise." There are 500 people watching and all of them are either Village Idiots or those who despise them. I honestly don't think anyone else is paying attention at this point (I think they're focused on vacation or on finding the money to pay for gas so they can go on vacation), and so my outrage is way out of proportion to the actual impact these gasbags are having. I'll turn it back on after Labor Day. In the meantime, I shall rely on COT's distillations and Shoot the Messenger's (see below) spoofs of such stuff.

Meanwhile, Staten Island Republicans still have no candidate to run for Vito Fossella's soon-to-be-vacant seat. Party elder and scourge of New York City Guy Molinari is confused:

Whatever decision the party leaders make, it will have to come soon. Although they are calling one another and discussing the matter, no meeting of elected officials had taken place and none was planned.

“It’s mystifying,” said Guy V. Molinari, who is the former Staten Island borough president and is considered the unofficial dean of the island’s Republican leaders. “I’ve made scores of phone calls and asked the elected officials to convene to discuss potential candidates. But there is no meeting scheduled at this time, and I
don’t know if we’ll hold one. Someone needs to clue me in as to what’s really
going on.”

Poor dear! He doesn't realize that he's not clued in because NY Republicans are clueless. Maybe the national party has written the seat off? Or perhaps it's just the Curse of The Big Dick. Only one thing is sure: somewhere, Steve Gilliard is smiling ...

Are you coming to New York this summer? If you are, you could do worse than to stop by the Green Room Theater to catch Shoot the Messenger on Monday nights. The show recently incorporated the comic stylings of my aforementioned dear friend, so if you like her blog, you should definitely check out "Shoot." Find me in the audience on Bastille Day, July 28th, or August 11th, when Amy Goodman, Rachel Maddow, Paul Reickhoff, and Bill Moyers will be the respective guests during the show's "Thinking & Drinking" segment.

July 4th weekend: doing anything? I'll be here at some point and here at another and probably here at yet another. In other words, I'm keeping it local -- and keeping it real.