The Daily Babble

It's raining. It's been raining. This is winter here. It rains.

I've barely moved from the computer. I wrote the second (and I hope last) Frey post of the last 24 hours, and re-posted all four pieces on the subject, in order, at Books In Heat.

I do all my Internet stuff on my laptop, because being newer than my ancient (3 years old? 4?) desktop, it was simpler to connect it to the DSL. But with the smaller screen and resolution, it's doing my old eyes no good at all.

The coming weekend is shaping up to be strange. I attend a production of "As You Like It" on Friday night. It's my favorite Shakespeare comedy, so I'm looking forward to it, and dreading it simultaneously. You can figure out why. Then I have to write about it, which I usually would do mostly on Sunday. But Sunday is the Super Bowl, which normally wouldn't be a crucial matter except this year of course the Steelers are in it. So it becomes a crucial matter.

Then on Monday morning I'm supposed to do an hour call-in radio show on the Jefferson Public Radio network. What are the chances I'll have a voice by then? Or that I will have slept? Between celebrating or being depressed, and getting my review column in, chances aren't that good for many hours of rest. Margaret seems to feel I'm particularly entertaining when sleep deprived, so I'll have to count on that to get me through babbling on the airwaves.

The Big Smirk in the White House has done many awful and unforgivable things, but last night he really hit home when his State of the Union parody pre-empted one of the fictional Presidents in Commander-in-Chief and even more seriously, Boston Legal. William Shatner's performances as Denny Crain are singular, a force of nature, and have changed the entire mood and character of the show. But it's James Spader's character I've come to regard as a hero. I count on him to articulate the issues, with the eloquence that makes the bad guys lose. This I submit is the proper role of fantasy in our lives, or one of them, and in these times it is sorely needed.