Funny, that.

I just turned the last page of an autobiography of almost-but-really-not-quite-Triple-Crown-winner Funny Cide (horses these days... they just don't write the way they used to; I blame that darn IM for the shocking decline in their language skills) and I am reminded of the mystic creation of a champion racehorse. The industry screeches about bloodlines and breeding; I know the geneology of Smarty Jones better than I know my own. But you can mate the very same mare and stud together all day long and still not recreate anything anywhere near the magnificence of a fleet-footed sibling.

While delicately stepping around the angry and malodorous a few months ago at my local POST (that is the technical racing term for "piece of s--t track") I happened across a filly whose name indicated that she might be related to Funny Cide. I looked her up in The Daily Racing Form. Sure enough: She was the daughter of Distorted Humor, the sire of Funny Cide.

And completely winless.

There she stood, a sad little sister in a paddock ringed by dingy toothpicks while her half-brother endorsed his own line of beer and took phone calls from Regis.

For the life of me, I cannot remember her name.

Irony, thy name is the sister of Funny Cide.

Score!

Jim The Baby Nephew was in receipt of a basketball net for Christmas, which he took to immediately, which made Country The Brother-In-Law very happy indeed. The baby shows excellent ball-handing skills, but he soon bored of the actual ball, and took to stuffing every single thing he owns through the net so as to develop his small stuffed duck/loud obnoxious fake set of car keys/Aunt Tink’s hair handling skills. Then he started hot-dogging, and grabbed the little net in a gratuitous attempt to pull it down on top of himself, which further pleased his father.

“Every now and then it’s good form hang off the rim on the way down, son,” he said from the couch. I objected, and Jim got mad and charged the stands and beat up two uncles and a cousin before the cops came.

I am un-fond of basketball; it’s entirely too squeaky, and the shorts are uncomfortably close to a female-only clothing item known as a “squort.”

I orginially had high hopes for Jim as a jockey, but he weighs nineteen pounds now and is far past the point of getting any good mounts at all. So I was relieved when he returned to his best holiday sporting event, Throwing A Great Big Fit So You Freaky People Stop Passing Me Around.

I was less disturbed by his early basketball genius than I was by the box the net came in. It shows a whole set of Fisher-Price products, with a small white child attempting a stacking game, and an Asian baby practicing mergers and acquisitions on a tiny spreadsheet, and– for the basketball net? They show a black child towering over the playset. I don't think I have to tell you how massively offensive this is. Are they trying to say the black kid couldn’t handle the stacking game and all he’s good for is to try to dribble his way out of the ghetto? You can see the little white kid oppressing him all the way from the other side of the box.

Of course, the Asian baby will buy and sell them the both at least eight times over by kindergarten.

The Cost of Being Me

I wish to administer exaulted props and massive shout-outs to the reader called shardek, whose recent Honor System generosity just about covers the expense of renewing this domain name for another year, or, if you prefer, the cost of 7 boxes of Cheez-Its.

*wipes away tear*

You can make me cry too! Go ahead! Be honorable! Click above, MAKE ME CRY!!

Oh, and shardek: I am, in fact, a dirty, dirty hack who works for you.

or, just send a check to: blondechampagne@hotmail.com

Ringer

I am going to court utter disgrace and admit something here: Until four days ago, I had never read, nor seen, anything Lord of the Rings-centric. Not one fanfic. Not one movie trailer. Those obnoxious racks of teeny-tiny books at the checkout lane of Barnes and Noble? Passed ‘em right by. No Cookbook From Middle Earth for me.

When Josh the Pilot got tailwind of this, he did the only sensible thing and ended the relationship for the fourteen seconds it took him to shove Fellowship of the Ring into the DVD player. “This is the greatest fantasy trilogy of all time,” he informed me, and I nodded politely and juxtaposed this information with certain other fantasy trilogies in my life, wondering how long it will take Peter King to redigitize things so that everybody is running around all upset over, say, an evil-embodying iPod, because rings are just so passe, and won’t it be nice if Frodo shoots first.

It was important for me, a woman recently confused by the plot structure of Jim the Baby Nephew’s copy of Goodnight Moon, to have a guide. This is not a movie for the world in general; this is an all-you-can-eat buffet for the irretrievably geeked-out individual, as opposed to me, a completely cool person whose living room is currently accessorized by a fully extended lightsaber.

Viewing Fellowship of the Ring is a fourteen-hour experience, which is what tends to happen when you are watching a three-hour movie and somebody presses the pause button every two seconds because she doesn’t understand why these supposed “elves” don’t scamp about in pointy shoes with jingle bells on the toes.

“Wait, who’s that?” I would say, and the answer was invariably something like, “That’s Moonbeam Eaglebronnger, Jr., son of Toshama the Ooglewrapper, all-high majority leader of the Jabobbins, a race of Umberites living along the River of Quinty. They hate the Peepins but are closely allied with the Gormarands, of course.” Of course.

I can't believe anybody bothers to cut their way through this crap. I mean, when somebody says, “The tauntans of Hoth are no match for a standard Imperial AT-AT walker,” it’s perfectly obvious what they mean.

Most illumunating moment? One of the characters made a solemn announcement along the lines of, "We shall pass through Creamy Caramel World on our way to the Village of Nougat," and I said, "Why is that significant?" and Josh said, "Hold on a second, I'll draw a map." Say what you will about my unnatural attachment to White Christmas : You don't need no freakin' map to know that Bing Crosby, in the middle of the Vermont wilderness, is going to whip together a professional-grade collection of sets and dance numbers within forty-eight hours so as to save the old General's failing ski lodge.

I suppose I’ll understand and appreciate all this once I read the books, but here is what I’ve gathered:

-Elves, only slightly paler than I, are immortal; this immortality is carried in necklaces from the Claire’s Prom Collection.

-Somewhere between my junior year of high school and 2001, Rudy dropped out of Notre Dame and got a really fat face.

-One of the Vikings from the Capitol One commercials puts in appearance as an outstanding minor character, although I was mightily displeased when he did not start kicking Frodo right in the pocket, yelling “What’s in YOUR wallet?!”

I think we’re watching the second installment sometime after Christmas. Should polish it off by Memorial Day, tops.

Moonbeam Eaglebronnger, Jr., call your office at: blondechampagne@hotmail.com

Today's Pulitzer-Worthy Thought

Life throws at you what it will, whether you want it or not. Like, sometimes I'll do backflips while braiding my hair and singing "FILL me up! BUTTERCUP, baby!" to get Jim the Baby Nephew to laugh while his mother is trying to feed him. He opens his mouth to express his delight, and then: Liquid green beans. Preparation for every day job you'll ever have, kid.

the peas look even worse at: blondechampagne@hotmail.com

Temporary Cash

Today I would like to issue mad props to St. Jude and St. Anthony, patrons of lost causes and finding stuff, respectively, for putting in a good word for me concerning my whole monetary situation, and delivering unto me a last-second temp assignment. I would also like to issue mad un-props to St. Christopher, patron of travellers, who failed to alert me to the bush-obscured presence of the cop who nailed me with the speeding ticket while driving to the assignment.

Are you fully appreciating what it's like to be me now? The fine, combined with the traffic school fee and the state tax and the bribes, has put me in the hole on the week. I don't blame the cop, who, after all, was just doing his job, but while tremblingly presenting my license I made a massive show of pulling it out from behind an enormous picture of Jim The Baby Nephew, murmuring, "I guess the money for the bone marrow transplant just isn't going to be there, son", and he was completely unmoved.

Sigh.

We need to have a talk about this… thing… at the top of the page.

Look, I don’t like it any more than you do. (Okay, maybe a little more than you do, as the entire concept rests upon you giving me money.) But things are becoming squeaky here at the Blonde Bachelorette Pad, Benjamin-wise. No, that’s not even… Things are becoming squeaky, Washington-wise. Recently the Millennium Bellemobile, clearly in the process of auditioning for the part of the car in The Blues Brothers, basically disintegrated into the concrete the last time I slammed the door. Also my COBRA payments have shot right up (“COBRA! When losing your job just isn’t screwage enough.”)

A sudden lack of temp assignments has proven simultaneously hideous and awesome. Awesome, obviously, in (1) the sense that it has provided me with a major opportunity to continue slamming together my first manuscript, allowing my artistic vision for the universe to shine through, and because (2) I didn’t have to work any stupid temp assignments.

Of course, this also means that the last time I was in the grocery I was forced to choose between the ’97 and the ’98 Mondavi Cabernet Sauvignon. The sheer poverty of the moment crushed my soul.

So please, ease my suffering. In exchange, I will admit that I am a dirty, dirty hack who works for you.

send check or money order to: blondechampagne@hotmail.com

Missing It

There was recently a huge, ideologically bitter fight going down at my alma mater, which is to say that life is carrying on as usual up there. When one graduates from the Saint Mary's College/University of Notre Dame family, one departs with one's philosophical lightsaber sizzling from four years of deflecting such rhetorical laser blasts as "the administration must form a committee to ascertain student input" and "we must demonstrate our Catholic character" and, of course, the Official Ideological Trump Card of the college student ("I thought this was AMERICA.")

It is the mark of a good intellectual to be easily offended, and when the Left-Handed ProLifers of Saint Mary's are riled and the Notre Dame Rodeo Club is affronted, the screams of the wounded commence, largely in the form of screeds in the student newspaper. Editorial content seldom changes; most cries for justice consist of a mishmash of eleventh-century Catholic doctrine, half a semester of philosophy and a selection of Dave Matthews' more ponderous liner notes. Microsoft's thesaurus function is consulted, charges of racism/sexism/capitalism/homophobia are leveled, the First Amendment is called into the arena, and usually at this point a newer, even more offensive crisis appears over the corn of the Indiana horizon. We refer to this as "community dialogue."

Intelligence

The 9/11 Intelligence Act was passed this week, possibly in response to the following:

On my Thanksgiving departure flight, as all the world is now gratified to know, I rescued my boarding pass from obscurity and moistness in an airport garbage can. That's a tough Act of Blondeness to follow, so on the return flight I broke several international transportation laws.

I am very serious about my carry-on bag. It must contain supplies for all contingencies: Food. Water. Pillow. Toothbrush. Toothpaste. Cash for bribes.

These items, clearly alarming terrorist threats, held me up for a good fifteen minutes at security. Perhaps they were tipped off by the long involved cell phone conversation I had at the brink of the security checkpoint (it was about a potential job offer, in the middle of which I began shrieking “YES YES YES YES I WANT IT” which created at least four seconds of uncomfortable entertainment for the fine citizens in the shoes-off line). When I finally stepped forward to present my (this time) fully dry boarding pass, the agent said, “Miss, could you please step over to Lane 1?”

Ah, Lane 1 at CVG. Lane 1 is for the Very Special Terror Suspects. I stood in line between a hacking seventy-year-old man and a tiny Asian woman who probably couldn't make it through a revolving door without passing out. They glared at me, for it was clearly I, with my reckless cell-phone useage, who had outed us as a recently-activated Hamas cell.

My duffel bag with its Paperback Regency Novel Of Doom slid through the X-ray machine. Not so much with the purse, which was endlessly jimmied back and forth on the conveyor belt. The Pope hasn’t been photographed this much. There was much pointing and squinting at the monitor.

“Miss, can you step over here while we go through your personal property?” yelled one of the agents as I hopped over to the machine—on one shoe, mind you—to pull my carry-on from the belt. Okay, now they’re making us do immunity challenges before we’re allowed to get on the plane.

“Go ahead on,” I said, propping my foot against a chair to lace up. I love the awesome folding chairs the airports put by the X-ray machines, because that totally makes up for inhaling the Nike fumes of the entire population of the 7:20 flight to Newark. Who actually sits there? Who’s planting cheeks on a surface the rest of the world has used as, basically, the floor? They have an actual bench in Orlando’s airport, delicately painted with curlique décor on the sides—the better to slam your crosstrainers against.

They got out the bomb swipes. Have you seen these things? They’re little white disks, and the TSA rubs them all over the item in question to check for traces of explosives. I have throwaway touch-up sheets kind of like this. You dab them against your face to sop up unsightly shininess without smearing your makeup. I have passed many hours deeply reflecting upon both these objects, struggling to determine which better serves humanity.

Then began the Rummage Section of the TSA Official Terrorism Prevention Procedure, which involved looking askance at my YOU ARE IN MARGARITAVILLE AND I AM THE WOMAN TO BLAME keychain, probing a suspicious tube of Bonnie Bell lipgloss (“See, Dave, it’s the Metallic SuperShine. We’ll detain her for questioning, of course”) and verifying that, if the pictures of Jim the Baby Nephew in my wallet were twenties, I could have easily bought my own plane.

They put my purse back together, a task which, really, only the mighty arm of the United States federal government could achieve, seeing as tissues and mirrors and pens and Teddy Grahams and Zach Morris-sized cell phones explode out of there at each unzipping.

Well… that’s fine. You can’t be too careful. Check all day, TSA.

So I’m on the plane, and I’m sitting there, and I sense a need for an Emergency Face Swab. I got out the mighty-mighty carry on, the one that slid riiiiiiiiiiight through security, and opened my makeup bag, in which I had to move my Lady Gillette with all three of its blades in order to get to the face wipes.

But whew am I glad they fully vetted those Kleenex.

free shoes may be delivered to blondechampagne@hotmail.com

Mother's Day

December 8 marks the feast of the Immaculate Conception, when we Catholics put aside our fretting over bingo covers long enough to reflect on the creation of the stainless soul of the Mother of God. Mary is specially graced, but I think it's safe to assume that she doesn't remember this event. If she does, she would likely reflect upon it as a somewhat uncomfortable surprise-- just like everything else in her life.

The Blessed Mother was an everyday peasant woman who was going about her everyday peasant life when a single obedient “okay” to some weird guy with wings changed everything, everywhere.

Nine months before little Jesus arrived, Mary's life was set. She was well-respected in her village. She was engaged to a nice boy. Her life lay before her, a straight and serene desert road.

And just as she adjusted to the idea of becoming a mother without the help of a man, she was forced away from the cozy home birth she probably expected, complete with midwife and her mother at her bedside. Instead she did it in a stable in far-off Bethlehem. There were sheep and cows and a feeding bin—- and an escape to Egypt that meant no return home until her child was almost two years old.

“He’s run off with his friends,” she must have assumed when her Son turned up missing in Jerusalem some years later. Imagine her shock when she found Him zinging the elders in the Temple with wisdom far beyond His twelve years.

“A carpenter, like his father,” she likely thought as watched her Son grow. But suddenly in the place of wagons and fishing boats were throngs of people demanding to be healed; then, a soldier’s cruel whip and a cross.

What did she expect on Easter morning? Did Jesus clarify for His Mother the teachings and predictions that so often escaped the apostles?

Whatever Mary had been steeled for, she was likely knocked sideways by the intense sorrow of the cross and the relieved joy of Easter.

And when her Son was lifted away from her forty days later, she was probably surprised again, only to be amazed once more when the formerly trembling apostles, infused with the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, went tumbling into the streets to proclaim that her child was indeed alive.

A mother’s life, turned upside down again and again by her own child.

These things happen, when God is involved.

Airport!

Let us speak of airports and how I love them, and how they hate me. I adore an airport environment, as long as I have plenty of reading material and $57,000 in ready cash to buy a bottle of water and nobody touching, or within a ten-mile radius of, my person.

People are going places in an airport: Are they coming or going? Happy or sad? Trying to kill me, or merely attempting to goad me into killing them by sucking up four entire chairs with their carry-on barges? You must observe these things; otherwise, it’s all gate announcements and automatic faucets (“Will waving my hands here turn it on? Here? Here? No? Here? Screw it, I’m washing my hands in the toilet.”)

So I’m sitting there at the gate the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, and I’m eating my hot pretzel (net worth: $1.8 billion) and I throw away the napkins and I go to the Little Jaded Traveller’s Room, and when I get back… ummmmmmmm… where’s my boarding pass?

No step-retracing like a frantic step-retracing involving a now-unflushed public toilet, and I couldn’t find it, and now they’re announcing the flight, and oh crap oh crap oh crap, and… awwwwww man, I know where I haven’t looked.

I have suffered many airport indignities, not the least of which involved lying down in the middle of Stapleton Airport in an attempted absolute refusal to leave the state of Colorado, but they all fall dead in the face of dumpster diving for a boarding pass. I don’t know about you, but I like my boarding passes wadded with salty napkins, reclining against a half-eaten tuna roll, slightly moist.

I began to feel horrible about handing this thing off to the gate agent, but when he picked up the gate microphone and said, “It’s time to talk turkey about boarding rows eighteen through twenty-nine!” my heart was filled with gladness.

remonstrations for not posting in six days may be sent to: blondechampagne@hotmail.com

On the Plane Again

I return to The Swamp today, where Josh The Pilot will be waiting at the airport. May he greet me wreathed in smiles and bearing an enormous luggage cart to load up the fourteen thousand new photographs of Jim The Baby Nephew engaged in a wide range of riviting activities, such as lying on the floor.

Josh called on Thanksgiving Day, and I asked him what he and his family were up to.

“Sitting around reading Blonde Champagne,” he said.

Well, that’s just outstanding. I absolutely love the thought of my new boyfriend’s family gaining their first impression of me based upon this, this, and of course this.

Yeah!

Yesterday I partied with Jim The Baby Nephew in his bouncy seat. His father was DJing on LimeWire in the hizz-ouse, and we were dancing to “Yeah!” by Usher, which is entirely appropriate music for a seven-month-old, in particular the following lyric: “So gimmie the rhythm and it'll be off with they clothes, then bend over to the front and touch your toes/We want a lady in the street but a freak in the bed to say, Yeah! Yeah!”

Jim has a disturbingly good sense of rhythm for a white German Catholic baby. Clearly he was switched out in the hospital. In any case, it was refreshing to dance with a sober guy who had absolutely no designs on grabbing any portion of my body; Saturday night regained its sense of normalcy, however, when my partner threw up on me.

Jim also has the rather upsetting habit of waving his white diaper cloths around over his head. The first time I caught him doing this, I shut him down fast, on the grounds that it made him look French.

I am fascinated by the sight of my sister as a mother and her husband as a father. Julie can give Jim things that Country The Brother-In-Law cannot. Country The Brother-In-Law can give him things that Julie cannot. And I can give Jim things that neither one of them can, such as a pony.

EAT

I type this before you a spit-upon woman, spotted with cereal, formula, a wide variety of drool, and several unidentifiable stains I am loathe to investigate too deeply.

This after four hours in charge of Jim The Baby Nephew, at the end of which I was positive enough time had passed that it was time to take him to Freshman Orientation at his college of choice.

Things went well, considering I went to the kitchen to prepare a dish of cereal, and after ten minutes of adding cereal and drizzling in some water and adding cereal and drizzling in some water and adding cereal and drizzling in some water my mother finally came in to see what was taking so long.

“I can’t get the consistency right,” I said, throwing Jim’s tiny-tiny spoon down in frustration.

She watched for a moment. “That’s not cereal,” she said.

Okay, so the soy formula and the rice cereal are different things. I don’t understand what all the fuss was about; it’s all going to end up in spewn form on my shoulder anyway.

“Aunt Tink is horrifyingly incompetent, isn't she,” I crooned as I spooned the CEREAL into my nephew.

For months I have been looking for elements of myself in this child, and I think I’ve finally found one. As my sister put him to bed, I watched as he curled into a ball, started rubbing his little feet together, and put a thumb in his mouth, exactly the same position his aunt takes at night, only without the thumb, unless the Reds have had a particularly bad night with the bullpen.

naptime at: blondechampagne@hotmail.com

Science!

“You owe me a burp,” I overheard my sister solemnly announce to her son. “Yes you do.”

He doesn’t owe her any spit-up, however, as recently he managed to spew in his own ear. Jim The Baby Nephew is fond of hanging out in a bouncy seat that suspends between the doorjamb of his father’s office. They totally need to make these in adult sizes, and I want one for Christmas. Jim has figured out how to spin while bouncing, which is all fun and games until somebody spews his green beans and centrifugal force whips it back in his face (Science!) Truly, this is my godchild.

We’re easily entertained, the two of us. I was in charge of Jim in the backseat of his parents’ 4-Runner for a half-hour car trip, .00000001 seconds into which he became bored. So we played What’s Not Child-Proof in Aunt Tink’s Purse?, a game featuring, among other items, a package of peanut butter crackers, a tube of mascara dating from the Reagan administration, and a pill bottle brimming with government-controlled antidepressants. (The pill bottle was deemed interesting; the crackers not so much; the mascara rapidly taken away by his father.) I don’t understand why they won’t let me baby-sit on my own.

Educated

Jim the Baby Nephew passes his days honked off at his teeth. They’ve been arriving for about a month now, and up until last week he hadn’t progressed much past the constant announcement that he, The Prince, is displeased.

“He’s learning that pain is an unavoidable part of life,” my mother said as he yowled in the background. I always assumed that he received his primary lessons in this every Sunday afternoon, when his parents sit him in front of a Bengals game. I guess that doesn’t involve enough learning about drool, which is also apparently an unavoidable part of life.

Jim, unlike his aunt, is of the opinion that figuring things out is the best fun ever. He has this toy with all kinds of levers and pullies and seizure-inducing spinning things, and the last time I was home the two of us sat and twirled things for the better part of an hour.

“He’s really not playing,” said his grandmother. “He’s learning. This is work for him.” I watched as Jim banged for the eight thousandth time on a tiny blue star that flashed when he hit it. As this involved approximately the same amount of skill level as my last day job, Jim is practically middle-management material.

The toy also has a musical mode, but instead of tinkling piano or soothing bing-bongs, this thing emits a playlist obviously performed by the Carter-era band playing the cocktail lounge at the Holiday Inn down the street. Call me retro, but the last time I checked "I'm A Little Teapot" did not involve synthesizers and a rimshot. We do not switch on the musical mode, because as far as this child will be concerned, the seventies never happened, musically. He is far too intelligent to risk exposure to "Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head."

What I’m learning is that babies create utter personality alteration in the adults around them. I saw my accountant sister gather Jim to her the second she came in the door from work, saying happily, “I haven’t seen you all day!” She plopped him on the couch and made a series of faces and noises I formerly only associated with people on horse-level methamphetamines. I have honestly never loved her so much: At last, purposful idiotic behavior. We are equals now.

Country The Brother-In-Law, on the other hand, has become more grim: “I’ve had just about enough of your crap,” he announced as he strapped a whining Jim into his car seat. My father’s voice rises at least eight octaves in the presence of his grandson, but as Jim and I are basically at the same level of social development (“Look! FLASHING LIGHTS!!”), I remain unaffected.

Completely Awesome Temp Job Report, Part III

I now understand the Influx of the Undatable, a subspecies of humanity only seen in The Swamp and possibly one or two other convention-rich cities. Conferences like this just absolutely sewer them in from across the fruited plane. It takes enormous balls or enormous idiocy or both to hit on a person hurling a T-shirt at you; this did not stop the upstanding fifty-six-year-olds of the Athletic Business Conference from receiving, in addition to their complimentary pickle-vomit green T-shirts, an absolutely free “the only reason I’m letting you breathe in front of me is because I am being paid $10.50 an hour to do so” facial expression.

There were lulls in between registration waves, leaving time to stare at the ricecake-colored walls engaged in The Expression of the Temp (“I am so glad I put myself into crushing student debt for this.”) At one point my co-worker Mel and I managed to escape long enough to troll the trade show floor. The vendors greeted us cheerfully as we passed; we responded by stealing pens. Blue pens! Black pens! Pens with a coiled spring for a body! We took them all! Marketing, f-yeah!

Mel shoplifted a mint from a soccer ball distributor. And paid for it. “What th—“ he said, spitting it onto a display of basketball nets. I pointed, and laughed, for what did the man expect, actually putting into his mouth food obtained at a trade show for athletic equipment? The artificial turf samples probably tasted better.

(Favorite trade show vendor: As we approached, we saw just a world-endingly enormous ceiling fan suspended from the ceiling, and agreed that it was, in fact, a big ass fan. Imagine our delight when we got to the booth and found it occupied by a company entitled Big Ass Fans. They had bumper stickers. We took four.)

We wandered past a mammoth treadmill that clearly needed its own land permit and an exercise bike apparently capable of launching the space shuttle. Past the Treadmill That Ate Tampa was the answer to a ponderous life question that I didn’t even know I had: If you really needed to buy a scoreboard the size of Montana, where would you go? Mel and I found an entire catalogue of vendors: Pixilated, flat screen, retractable, four-color.

Mel stood before one that featured simulated crowd noise. “I’ve got one of those on my headboard at home,” he told me. Yes, but did it come with a pen?

Completely Awesome Temp Job Report, Part II

This is an Authorized Businesspeople Convention, officially sanctioned by the Corporatespeak Bullcrap Society of America, as evidenced by the workshop entitled “Thinking Outside the Box”—8:15 AM Monday, top of the schedule. These people are not messing around. They have more clichés thrown into their Powerpoint presentations by 9 AM than most people see all day.

In all, the suckage factor on this assignment is fairly low, if you excuse the $74.50 Twix in the vending machines, but because my highly specialized skills are so desperately needed in the T-shirt distribution booth, I am unable to attend such fascinating conference sessions as the following:

“In this workshop, we will discuss proper construction of group activities concerning rules, officiating, and full participation, which will allow fun to occur.”

Hey! EVerybody DAAAAAAAAAAAAANCE!

Then there’s this one: “Exercise Programming for the Deconditioned Population.” Translation: “Getting Up and Sitting Down For the Terminally Fatassed.”

But this is my favorite-- “The Role of Recreation and Youth Sports in an Era of War and Terrorism: Recreation and youth sports are an important instrument for peace. In this session, you’ll learn how to implement strategies for promoting world peace into your organization and identify existing youth sports organizations that are including strategies for world peace in their programs.”

That’s really tremendous, because there’s not enough pressure on kids in sports already. “DAMMIT, BOBBY, THROW IT TO THIRD!! THE PALISTINIAN-ISRAELI PEACE ACCORDS DEPEND ON IT!”

I also served a tour in the registration booth, where I met Larry the Horrible. All Larry wanted out of life was to know if every person he had ever met in life was in attendance at the conference, none of whom, for obvious reasons, were.

“Is Amy Cassleton here? No? What about Tim Rosdower? Well, he was here last year. Reggie Hamlin? Not him either, huh? Is Bob here? I don’t remember his last name, but he was definitely at the August meeting, and he is a wizard. Can you just read off all the Bobs you have on the screen there? What about the guy who X-rayed my bags at the airport, has he checked in yet?”

Attendance at the convention is off thirty percent from the previous year, 29.999999% of which, I think, we can attribute directly to Larry. Four hurricanes in six weeks? Ain’t got nothin’ to do with it.

My very favorite registration moment came from the World’s Most Prim Asian Woman, who signed in with an email address of “FoxyThunder28,” closely followed by hearing a guest yell down the line, “Hey, look at that guy’s monkey!” And--yep--there was some guy wandering around the lobby, primate slung around his neck like a high-tea accessory. Because, come on, what’s an athletic business supply conference without your monkey in tow?

OK, I’m out of here. Off to play T-ball for the starving children in Ecuador.

checking the Bobs at blondechampagne@hotmail.com

Triple X

This week’s Horrible Crap Temp Job Hit Parade takes us to the Orange County Convention Center, which seems a nice enough place, free of elevator-riding engineers and sexually harassing mice.

The Convention Center is like all convention centers, which for some reason are very carefully designed to maximize confusion and general butt-ugliness. Ballrooms sprawl, meeting rooms number according to lunar phases, and the Grab Your Ankles And Take The Ticket parking lots are conveniently located in southern New Mexico. And yet, I think I need to take up residence here. The hallways? Are phenomenal. You could sail the Titantic through the main lobby. I want to turn handsprings and backflips all the way down the horrifying carpet, if I could do so without cracking off various vertebrae.

I have ascended from putting my MFA to work making copies to applying eighteen years of education in handing out T-shirts. This is an athletic business conference, which, disturbingly, is attended by a great many people who-- let's put it this way, good thing those hallways are so frickin' huge.

This has been an exercise in why the citizens of Orlando pretty much hate every single person who ever visits here. Never mind 99.999999999 of us would be wandering the streets without the tourism industry; we hate them. Largely for reasons such as this: Directly behind me rested a gigantic sign reading “T-SHIRT SIZES: LARGE AND EXTRA-LARGE,” which of course immediately forced the question, “What size T-shirts do you have?

“Large and extra-large,” I would say.

(Pause)

“Give me a small.”

Compensating for all this, however, was the five-foot-one man who asked if we had any triple extra-larges back there. Not sayin' a word...

get your T-shirt at blondechampagne@hotmail.com

It really DOES hold the world together!

What you need to do on the second date, ladies, is put your life in the gentleman’s hands, because all the awkwardness is so much easier to bear when trees and cows and people are rushing up at several hundred miles an hour.

Let’s have a big blonde welcome for the lovely and talented Josh The Pilot, also known as Person Who Put Me Into a Very Small Aircraft and Totally Did Not Let Me Die.

Also, men, an excellent second-date strategy? Kick things off by asking your date how much she weighs. Josh did not do this outright, possibly because he wanted a third date, possibly because he did not want his face bashed in, but it is my understanding that he had to do some guesstimation to figure our center of gravity. This involved, apparently, performing all sorts of horrible scary calculations involving numbers, some of which were, I’m afraid, decimals.

“You’ve heard of ‘the envelope'?” an airport employee asked, pointing at the computer. “That’s the envelope.”

The envelope, as it happens, is highly disappointing. Turns out it's a graph, with lines, and quadrants, and further math, and is not very exciting at all. I was hoping for a large, Tic-Tac-Dough-style dragon, or a wall of flames, or, at the very least, an actual envelope.

Given the size of the plane, though, it’s probably safe to say that I accounted for at least a third of the total weight. I fly on a regular basis, but on large commercial jets featuring multiple engines and massive cargo holds and enormous, odorous passengers crammed into the seat next door. This plane… this plane had clearly come out of a box from K-Bee, accessories sold separately.

I followed Josh around the Micro-Machine as he prepared it for flight. (It was a Cessna 172RG, I later discovered when I reported in to my Air Force father, and he said “Ooooohhh.” It was not a good “Ooooohhh.” “What?” I said. “Let’s just say,” he told me, “that when that thing was probably built, a Democrat was in the White House, and I ain’t talking about Clinton.”)

I watched as Josh drained some fuel out of the tank (“You’re going to put that back, right?”) “What color do you see in there?” he said, holding a vial of it up to the light.

“Blue.”

“Guess what that means.”

“The plane is pregnant?”

I trotted after him to the other side. “What’s that?” I said, pointing at an irregular silver section.

“Duct tape.”

“What?”

“It’s not like it’s an important part of the plane,” he said.

“The WING isn’t an important part of the plane?”

I think the Home Depot section of the aircraft was probably closer to the fuselage, but in my world? Every part of the plane is important. Every part. The brakes are important. The airspeed indicator is important. The little bags of peanuts are important, and I want them all certifiably duct-tape free.

This is the very first time I’ve been able to say this regarding a second date, but: He opened the door of the airplane for me. And you know what? Planes have keys. The man needed a key to start the airplane. I sincerely hope this is also not the case on fighter jets (“SCRAMBLE! SCRAMBLE!!” “Oh $&#%, I left the keys in my other oxygen mask.”)

Our plane, however, perhaps because it was, I don’t know, older than God, did not start, which was temporarily excellent because it provided me the opportunity to bust out the Princess Leia impression (“Would it help if I got out and pushed?”) but it ceased to be so once I saw Josh bang on the console to get the thing going.

(I reported this incident to Nick the NASA Poobah, and there was a pause on the other end of the line, which I presumed was a small moment of silence in honor of Josh’s ego. “A pilot,” Nick said, “would rather stand in front of a group of strangers in his underwear rather than have something go wrong on an airplane in front of a woman.”)

Josh told me to latch the window, and I did, and then applauded myself for having helped fly the plane. Later, I retracted the landing gear, which, according to NASA regulations, fully qualifies me to command the next space shuttle mission.

I will say this: I can Velcro up a sandal, and occasionally start a dishwasher, and every now and then flush a toilet without creating too much destruction, but I will never, ever, successfully guide any object heavier than fuzz into the air and over the ocean and back down again in one piece. Josh did this, without effort, and with a medium-sized passenger constantly pressing her headset mike against her face yelling “Red Five, coming in.”

We landed and took off a couple times at an isolated airstrip, and one of the landings was a little bumpy, about which I said absolutely nothing, because let’s face it, I am frequently unable to find the state of Florida, let alone a barely-lit strip of land in East Pieceofcrap.

“Remember that second landing?” Josh said as we drove away from the airport.

“Uh-huh,” I said, watching the ground go by at an altitude of three and a half feet.

“Yeah, I did it blind.”

“You what?”

“The landing lights,” he said. “They short-circuited, and I had to land it blind.”

“Well I,” I said, “can recite the entire preamble to The Canterbury Tales in the original medieval English.” Which is slightly less impressive, but the last time I checked, nobody really cared how much Chaucer weighed.

“Ain’t nothin’ funny about it."

The post-traumatic stress disorder has worn off, and we may now discuss Halloween.

There are in this world many manifestations of wrong, but I was not aware of just how many until last Saturday. We should have known, really. We should have known it was going to be a rough night the instant the guy wearing nothing but Incredible Hulk Underoos and a serene expression skated past. And as it happened, he had friends. These things happen, in Florida, but that doesn’t make it right.

Flipper, G-Force, and I were in Halloween attendance at a bar that may be most accurately described as the Mos Eisley Cantina. We were attired, respectively, as a pirate, Carmen Miranda, and a harem girl, which made for big fun when we dropped into a grocery store to pick up bananas for G-Force’s hat.

Mingling with the costumed never fails to add a new dimension to horrific attempted pick-ups; Flipper made a new friend when a male pirate walked up to her making very unconvincing “RRRRAAAAHHHH!” noises while brandishing a dagger.

“Mine’s longer,” she said, unsheathing a two-foot plastic sword.

G-Force had many fruit-grabbers to her credit (“Are those real?”) I had an all-American run in with half of the winner of the costume contest, an Osama bin Laden who was wandering around at the end of a lasso held by George W. Bush.

“Hey baby,” said Osama.

(Our own personal winner was the guy in the t-shirt with an arrow pointing up next to the words “THE MAN”, immediately followed by an arrow pointing down next to the words “THE LEGEND.” "Ain't nothin' funny about it,” he said when we burst out laughing.)

A proposition from the most evil man in the whole entire solar system made me feel far cleaner, however, than simply seeing the Village People. The actual Village People are the ultimate Not That There’s Anything Wrong With That; but dressing as the Village People from the waist up while wandering about in Underoos from the waist down? THERE'S SOMETHING WRONG WITH THAT.

“F—K YOU, REDSKIN!” the cowboy screeched when he ran into the Indian outside the men’s room.

“F—K YOU, COWBOY!” said the Indian, and then followed a fight scene followed that has likely ignited the apocalypse. I turned my eyes unto the Lord in my distress, for really, hasn’t Florida suffered enough?

But the Village People, in their dreadfulness, managed to do what the entire combined forces of the United States government could not –they united the people of a furiously contested swing state forty-eight hours before Election Day. In a small space holding the approximate population of greater Chicago, these guys traveled the bar with a space cushion of at least fourteen feet. It was like the aftermath of a natural disaster: We had no other recourse but to turn to one another in a desperate attempt to overcome the massive psychological damage. We should send them on a world tour. The entire Middle East would be wrapped in one gigantic hug, after seeing this.

“I think I’ve had a little too much to drink,” a money-covered woman dressed as FEMA said, watching them go.

“And I haven’t had enough,” said G-Force, ordering a shot.

People were resembling the Nazis at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark—we would behold the awesome power, and our faces would melt. They managed to find their way onstage while the house band took an intermission. One was particularly enamoured of the keyboard.

“You might want to Lysol that,” I said to the keyboardist when he returned. “In fact, you might want to burn down everything within a four-mile radius.”

Things took an upward swing when we were simultaneously hit up by three roofers from Ireland, (“I apologize for my nation,” I said, indicating the Village People) all of whom were currently becoming very rich men by picking up post-hurricane construction work, which probably explained why, as one of them threw me around the dance floor, he kept yelling “I LOVE AMERICA!!”

They were alarmingly culturized, screaming the words of “I Will Survive” over the band, and excellent conversationalists. “What do you do for a living?” one asked me.

“I’m a writer,” I said.

“And what do you write?”

“Things that don’t make much money.”

“Well, you should hang in there,” he said solemnly as his friends nodded. “Think of the woman who wrote all the Harry Potter books. Write something like that.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Or,” he added, “Winnie the Pooh!”

We left the Irish Tenors behind at three in the morning wih a high-quality version of “I Love This Bar,” despite their entreaties to invite them home to, quote, “a party.” The entire encounter was summed up by Flipper: “Nice guys,” she said, “but oh my God, the teeth.” Then followed a discussion of socialized health care, and modern toothpastes, and how for some reason these two things seemed to have resulted in utter lack of oral care in the entirety of the British Isles.

“Solid good times,” I said as the man in the green fright wig rolled past. He had since added an X of electrical tape over one nipple. I cannot wait for Thanksgiving.

Aw, man, I gotta have a life now?

I was Sunburned for Liberty the week before the election at a Space Coast rally. I mean, that’s The Love. Nick the NASA Poobah scored my ticket as well as a prime place in line. Doors opened at 10:45; he reported to the front of the line at approximately four in the morning. ("THIS ADMINSTRATION FORCIBLY DRAGS THE AMERICAN PEOPLE OUT OF BED AND CONTRIBUTES TO SKIN CANCER!!!!")

“Where are you?” he said at 8:15.

“Um,” I said, looking around my apartment, which was an hour from the stadium. “Just about there!”

The line was an excellent opportunity to socialize, and also pick up and get picked up. I noticed one particularly comely conservative passing out Viva Bush! stickers and asked Nick, as my personal pimp, to survey his marital status.

“No ring,” he reported after a brief reconnisance.

“Ex-cellent,” I said, ensuring that The Rack was sparkling in the early morning light. "Go fetch."
Let’s all give me a round of applause for my keen sense of Who's Who, as saw this guy again an hour later, when he gave me a big smile. Of course, as a state Senator he was onstage delivering a pep talk, and was beaming at our whole entire bleacher section, but it was clear to the world that he totally wanted me.

Nick missed the budding relationship between me and Senator Hotness, as he was at the concession stand. When he returned, his face was grim.

“What?” I said as he unwrapped a hotdog.

“Heinz ketchup at the snack bar,” he said.

You know, sometimes in life, you’re standing there, and Marine 1 choppers over the horizon about twenty yards from your head. This happened to me, and, okay, it. Was. Awesome. It landed directly on centerfield, "spraying," the AP made certain to point out, "dust over supporters standing on the grass." ("THIS ADMINISTRATION HAS NO REGARD FOR THE PROPER MAINTENANCE OF BASEPATHS!!!!")

W talked to us, and we all waved at each other some more, and then Buzz Aldrin got in on the waving, and at one point a small yellow plane buzzed past the stadium. Everybody in the crowd exchanged glances. The airspace... was kinda sorta restricted today. Hey buddy, after you land? Tell your new cellmate we said hello.

Then the F-16 roared by.

Then the small yellow plane made another pass.

Then the second F-16 roared by.

Now we’re all exchanging glances again. “Oh shit,” the glances said.

The President, it must be noted, continued talking very earnestly about the deficit. Nobody was looking at him anymore, including me and Jeb and Buzz Aldrin and all the Secret Service agents, which… yeah, that made EVERYBODY feel better. You could kind of understand it, though: Anthrax was clearly about to drop out of the sky over us all, which was, granted, not the most comfortable feeling in the world, but at least then we personally wouldn’t have to worry about the deficit. It seemed a fair exchange.

(Turns out the small plane was merely the vehicle of a local aged asshat [degree: mega-] who was flying from New York to Boca Raton. You think he’d check into whether or not the President of the United States was swing-stating in a large open space ten days before the election, but, you know, people get distracted in their rush to make the Early Bird Special at Golden Corral.)

Letters From the Blue and the Red

Weeeeeelllllllll, there’s been a bit of traffic here in The Champagne Tasting Lounge over the past twenty-four hours. Greatest email/comment hits:

“I imagine you sitting up in your living room finally knowing your candidate won, eyes heavy with no sleep, mind fuzzy, you stand and crawl to the computer to post 'It is over' in victory. Once posted you curl into the fetal position and, finally, fall asleep wrapped up in your afghan shaped like an elephant. Sleep well, MB, your work here is done.” –IsSanityNear

“This election has been like two hours of frustrating sex—I just wanted it to come already.” –Anonymous

“I had a nearly identical experience today driving my kids to school, saying the Rosary. I was too embarrassed to call my mother. I think I got them right, though.”-amdg

“You've delivered Indiana even without Flip’s help. Win-win for you and W, lose-lose for Flip. Give me this poor guy's phone number, I'll buy him a beer.”-MilGuy

Man am I glad this is over with. Someday I might once again have the ability to keep down solid foods.

pile on at blondechampagne@hotmail.com

It's done.

"It's done."

-John Adams, 1776

Important Update From the Swing State of Ohio

My mother just referred to Dan Rather as, quote, "Diddleypoop."

Election Freakout UPDATE III

Pacing around like utter maniac, went rollerblading. Lights went out in the parking lot. Kept skating. Rolled over three or four small frogs. Am an evil conservative, so kept skating.

Playlist:

My Sharona
In the Shelter
Sidehackin'
I Would Walk Five Hundred Miles
If the House Is Rockin'
I Love You For Sentimental Reasons
Riverboat Gambler
This One's For the Girls
Hey Mickey
Walk Like An Egyptian

One minute to Glenn Beck's Insider Broadcast. I have his webcam up and he's toting his newborn son around. Fortunate child, he'll be completely unconscious through this whole thing.

Election Freakout UPDATE II, 5:47 PM

First crying meltdown complete. Second glass of wine pending.

Exclusive Election Freakout Coverage

begins downpage. Scroll baby scroll.

intimidating at: blondechampagne@hotmail.com

Voter Intimidation UPDATE IV

G-Force provides this very important report from Brevard County:

“Florida is the most f***ed-up voting place I have ever been.”

Voter Intimidation UPDATE III

Flipper, a noted Kerry supporter, voted early this monring, for some reason doubting my assurances that she should enjoy a nice leisurely dinner since the polls are open until well after seven tonight. Her precinct uses a Scantron thingie, which beeps when you feed your ballot through the machine correctly.

“What happened when you put your ballot in?” I asked.

“It beeped,” she said.

VOTER INTIMIDATION! HER MACHINE WAS INTIMIDATING HER!!

Election Freakout UPDATE, 1:38 PM

First glass of wine COMPLETE.

Voter Intimidation UPDATE II

This just in from Nick the NASA Poobah on Swamp Voting, Space Coast Division: He was waiting in line outside his polling place, and some screaming woman drove past in a pickup truck.

“What did she say?” I asked.

“Something, something, something ‘ashamed,’” he responded. “I couldn’t hear it all.”

“And were you intimidated?”

“Nah.”

“How did you feel?”

“Hungry, mostly.”

USA! USA!

Voter Intimidation UPDATE

Country the Brother-In-Law (his actual name is “Britton,” or possibly “Greg,” but my sister introduced him to me as “Britton” and I said, “You’re dating a COUNTRY?!”) reports in from Ohio: He entered his voting booth and found a stack of Kerry literature. Country is approximately nine feet tall, though, so he doesn’t intimidate as easily as one might think. He turned the packet in to a poll watcher, lay down on a fainting couch for a little while, and went to work.

Voter Intimidation

I’ve done all I can for this election, now, except beg. So I went to Mass.

The church I attend is one of those awful gym-like Vatican II affairs with the tabernacle helpfully separated and hidden from the actual parishioners, but fortunately the building is currently under renovation to make it even more horrible. There are mounds of dirt and cranes and liturgical dancers scattered all over the place, and happily it turns out to be a polling place besides, so this morning I got to dodge furious lost people as well.

The great thing about voting in a construction war zone is that it makes it difficult for the literature-shovers to find you. When I drove past, one of them attempted to intimidate me by standing around with a sign, but it was approximately the size of an index card, so I have no idea what it said. As you can imagine, I was very, very shaken.

Daily Mass in these drywalled parts takes place in a small, ugly chapel behind an extremely inspiring cardboard curtain. Voting was taking place directly on the other side of the divider, so we were kneeling there during the consecration with “PLEASE LINE UP ALONGSIDE THE FAR WALL AND LEAVE ALL LITERATURE…” as background music. I thank Thee, Lord, for this half-hour of respite from all things election.

Things are so unhinged around here that I turned to the Big Guns and got down on my knees with my Rosary. Today is Tuesday; we recite the Sorrowful Mysteries on Tuesdays. I did the Sign of the Cross. I said the Apostle’s Creed. Annnnnnd—knelt there.

And knelt there.

And knelt there.

I could not remember the Sorrowful Mysteries. A lifetime of rounding the beads, and I was utterly vapor locked. This was the set, I knew, that was somewhat depressing, what with all the whipping and the carrying and the crucifying, but I couldn’t remember the order, or the titles, and I considered going home and getting a prayer book, but then I couldn’t remember where I parked my car, either.

“Hold on a sec,” I said to the tabernacle, and got up and called my mother to tell me what they were.

“You need to calm down,” she said.

“Right,” I said. “Who is this again?”

An official from Orange County stopped me as I left. "Did you vote?" he snapped. I dropped my missalette and ran away, because... voter intimidation on your way out? MOST. RIDICULOUS. STATE. EVER.

Lock the Vote

Well... here we are.

I don’t know about you, but I for one will terribly miss the various electoral count scenarios. Nothing like reloading Drudge every four seconds for updates on how if Bush wins New Mexico, Florida and Colorado and Kerry claims Massachusetts plus Detroit and the vote of Rodney Dangerfield, we will definitely, depending on the turnout of transvestite nuns in the Northern states and middle aged half-Hispanic males who take their cheeseburgers without mustard, perhaps know the outcome of the election between 1 AM and the next total eclipse of the sun as determined by high tide in Japan and how many times Tom Brokaw has wiped his ass today. The polls are great too: “Well, Bush is up by one in Ohio and OH Kerry is pulling away in Pennsylvania but wait Gallup has them neck and neck EEEE here come the Zogby numbers…”

If it weren’t for these pesky morals, and also the fact that I look like crap in bright orange, I’d be in Ohio right now, double-voting. It seems I’m still registered there, according to my parents, who have been fielding all the campaign literature and voter registration information flooding into their mailbox under my name. So I told my sister to trot Jim the Baby Nephew to the polls in my place.

“Are you taking him into the booth with you?” I asked.

“He will stay in his stroller,” she told me.

I asked to speak to him.

“Jailbreak,” I said.

Jim thought about it for a minute, and then said “Aaaaaaaaaannnnwwww!” which I took as a solid Bush lean.

Also, if Barbra Streisand is reading this? LOSE MY NUMBER, Babs. She called my house at nine in the morning and I slammed down the phone so fast the nightstand crashed through the floor. I let Rudy Giuliani get three or four words out before hanging up on him, but really… admit it, fellow swing state voters, all these famous people calling us? I’m going to have trouble letting go of that. I am NEEDED! Until approximately four hours from now, when Curt Schilling will no longer give a rat’s ass about my political concerns. But until then, I am totally being used, and it is awesome!

I won’t be at the polls today, because through the magic of fraud I’ve already had my say via early voting. As you may recall, my vote here in Florida is so important, so vital, that it went from my apartment to the post office and directly back to my apartment again.

So I called the Board of Elections, and was on hold for twenty minutes, which totally confirmed my suspicion that my experience was a complete fluke and I was the only person in the whole entire state to have issues with casting my ballot. I was told to turn in my ballot at my early voting location, a branch library, which sounded like a good idea until I went in the door and the librarians all looked to be in various stages of homicidal.

The line was enormous. Optimistic dip that I am, I was under the impression that my visit would merely involve dropping my ballot in a box, but noooooooo, this would make sense, so I queued on up. After a time it became clear that I was in danger of realizing my absolute worst nightmare—being trapped in a boring place without a book—so I ducked into the Mystery section and got me some Dick Francis. Read four chapters before we passed the bathrooms.

One woman eyed me enviously. “Aren’t you smart to have brought a book!” she said. Yeah, too bad we were in a LIBRARY and she couldn’t lay her hands on anything to READ.

Now, I’m very proud to be casting my ballot for the President, and I’m sure that Kerry voters are also...well, I’m sure… okay, let’s just say that everybody has a right to their opinion. I myself follow a hard-and-fast guideline at the polls that may be referred to as The Dixie Chicks Rule: You have your say in the booth. Otherwise? STFU.

I was thrilled to see that the opposing side adhered to this as well. One woman popped up in line wearing a Kerry button, which… You know what, I WAS going to vote for Bush, but NOW? Now that I’ve seen your BUTTON I have totally changed my mind.

So I regarded her as merely another American having her say, and stood quietly.

She did not.

I didn’t catch everything she said, but I did hear “Karl Rove… oil…frat boy” float down the line, which gave me a general idea of what was going on up there. The people around me began to shift uncomfortably.

“I give her ninety seconds to a ‘Hailliburton,’” I said to Dick Francis' author photo.

“And, you know, Cheney is knee-deep in…”

The line crawled. I began to crave a sausage biscuit.

The American democratic process is not a perfect system, but it is a great nation that can include on its ballot both the sitting President AND Ralph Nader, who has clearly begun to believe that he deserves to be king because some watery tart threw a sword at him.

When I got to the front I held out my stamped, cancelled, trod-upon absentee ballot and asked for further direction. The envelope was checked for evidence of tampering and a proper signature across the back. Then things got complicated.

The poll worker pointed to a box. “Put it in there,” she said.

It had a huge padlock on it and a plastic strip to signify that the box hadn’t been tampered with for at least the last twenty minutes. Well, if nothing else, Florida gave Al Gore his lockbox.

I put my vote in the box, but although I kissed the envelope AND the mailbox for luck the first time I attempted to cast it, I did not plant one on the lockbox, because that would be weird.

Election Extra from Dennis Miller:

VOTING INSTRUCTIONS

1) Did you register?
2) Did you bring ID?
3) Did you take your head out of your ass before arriving at the polls?

P.S.: I'll be heavily updating throughout the day--by which I mean maybe twice--so if yesterday's very important post about cookies gets knocked off the page, go here.

Election Day Entertaiment

DO not miss this. Or, in a very big way, this.

Go W, it's your birthday!

**Grandma, this one's for you and Uncle Jim and the sacks of ballots you used to haul from the precinct to the BOE on Election Day. I know you're working hard for us up there. I love you.**

We Meet At Dawn

As a person who pays an extra $15 a month to live in an apartment complex with a gym, I would like to bitch about walking seven miles the other day.

Walking seven miles for free in a neighborhood with chalk outlines at every bus stop is known as “shoe leather politics”, or “hitting a total stranger's doorbell with a four-color brochure in hand, hoping that whoever answers the door is at least 50% clothed.” This election has been described as hand to hand combat, but seriously? I didn't expect to have to show up with actual weapons. Once the election is over, I expect, at minimum, a Cabinet post.

Most precinct walks are performed in pairs, so that if one of the walkers gets shot, the other can call back to headquarters and ask for a ride to the next district (we are very devoted walkers, here in The Swamp.) The thing about precinct walking is, you never know what to expect. You could be assigned to a cute little business district, the heart and soul of American capitalism. You could wind up in suburbia, with tricycles... and a 4-runner in every driveway...and 2.5 children holding hands while skipping through sprinklers... and all. Or, in my case, you could find yourself on the set of Bladerunner, courting alien abduction.

Far be it from me to make snap judgments about the moral composition of a person by the outside of their homes, but when the first house you see has a boat up on blocks scriptfully entitled "The Island Trash", let’s just say… I’m going to have to respectfully decline any block party invitations.

In addition to enjoying the streets paved with crack, I was also underhydrated. They were offering bottles of water at the campaign headquarters, but it was Dasani, the composition of which is 4% water, 96% Morton’s salt. So I went without, but I was also on anti-spew meds, which made for that exquisite human condition of dying of thirst and yet having to pee at the very same time.

Also—and you are going to be downright shocked by this—I found myself disoriented. I parked on the side street with the fewest amount of bullet casings and started making my way around, and by the end I was still missing one of the houses on my list, located on a tiny street called “Kirk.” But there is no giving up in Bushville—537 votes, he won by only 537 votes last time, we constantly repeat unto ourselves—and so I asked a passing mailman for directions. He stubbed out a cigarette on his Glock and pointed me in exactly the wrong direction, which I discovered only after realizing that I had already passed this here pawn shop and that particular prostitute and was now walking in circles.

So I admitted semi-defeat and headed back to the Millennium Bellemobile, which I fully excepted to find stripped, but did not, as apparently even the felons have standards where sunroofs are concerned, and started hunting down Kirk Street vehicularly. Which wasn’t going too well until I made a complete circuit of the neighborhood and found myself right back on the street I was parked on, which, according to the street sign, was—-say it with me now—-Kirk.

There was also phonebanking to do, which was far safer but also far more depressing. Phone banking involves dialing the fax machines and disconnected numbers of total strangers and directing them how to vote, which is exactly the type of call I’m always eager to receive. We had a little script to read, which thanks to campaign finance reform (is it just me, or is the only apparent reform to campaign financing the added bonus of hearing, “I’m so-and-so, and although the production quality is piss-poor and I just accused my opponent of having sex with baby sheep, I approve this message”) included the fact that the call was paid for by the Republican party, which had the added bonus of making us sound like total tools instead of merely electoral busybodies. One of my fellow callers got around the caveat by beginning each answering machine message with, “This is the Republican party calling!” which seemed kind of okay in theory, but this guy was approximately four hundred years old, tending to leave the impression that the Republican party sounded like the Pope muttering into a bus station intercom. After a while he also started adding “Go Bush-Cheney!” but in this very tiny, very frail voice that may actually help us, because, listen, if I were a swing voter and came home to that message on my machine, these words that were clearly the last gasps of a man on his deathbed, I know which way I would vote.

I was facing a small television set while making my calls, and Fox was broadcasting wall-to-wall campaign coverage. I’d see W and then Lurch and then Big Time and then The Breck Girl and then W again, but it was difficult to discern the date and location of the Presidential footage, because the man apparently never changes his shirt. The President was wearing this chambray blue shirt at his campaign kickoff rally in Orlando back in March, he was wearing it last week at Space Coast Stadium, and frankly I’m starting to think he was so craptacular in the first debate because he dared to campaign without it.

Sometimes I would get a Bush voter on the line and exchange sympathies. “I early-voted for Bush,” one woman told me. “Who wants Ichabod Crane for a President?”

But in all the calling was horrible, as expected, because it put me in contact with people who should never, ever have the right to vote. Example:

“I’m calling from the Bush-Cheney campaign—“

“The what, honey?”

“The campaign to re-elect President Bush and Vice-President Cheney.”

(Pause.)

“Is that some kind of cookie?”

Democracy! Getcha some!

bartender pour the wine at: blondechampagne@hotmail.com

Flip UPDATE

So my buddy Flip (who, judging by the comments and email, will henceforth be known in this space as "Underwear Flip") has issued a response to my viewing-for-voting offer, and that response is... lawyery.

Now he's all about "terms" and "addendum" and "my understanding is..." He wants a front row seat for the disrobing, and is also demanding that I, quote, "move around a little." I frankly don't know what the line is between "move around a little" and "dancing," which as you may recall I have previously declared as right out. What, then, does he want me to do for thirty seconds, if the standing there isn't good enough for him? Work a crossword puzzle? Fire people in a Trumpian manner? Save money on my car insurance by switching to Geico?

We're bringing in the people who negotiated the Presidential debates to get this thing hammered out before Tuesday. I can confirm that as of this morning, we have agreed that a green light will indicate that the countdown has commenced; a yellow light signals that five seconds are left; and red means that we can all exhale and return to our regularly scheduled, fully clothed discussion of whether or not Yukon Cornelius suffered from bipolar disorder.

operators are standing by at blondechampange@hotmail.com

Booooooooo.....

So I’m dumping the box of Halloween costumes out on the floor, and… there wasn’t much there. I don’t mean there wasn’t a great deal to choose from--we’re talking fourteen year’s worth of costumes here—-but… there wasn’t much there. For a person who very recently passed four Halloweens in northern Indiana, which is not particularly known for its balmy late Octobers, there wasn’t a lot of coverage going on in these costumes. The total square feet of material in the lot of them could have covered maybe a six-pack of Tic Tacs.

The dance hall girl, the adorable ladybug, Tink the French maid whose ancestry is totally German: They were all here. I regarded one gauzy skirt with particular interest… which one was this a piece of? Oh, wait, there’s the matching gold bra. I believe the proper term is “exotic dancer.”

You can get away with this, when you’re nineteen and very, very chemically enhanced. When you’re pushing thirty? Not so much. I don’t care what you’ve been drinking.

I think we can officially file this feminine practice of celebrating the vigil of a major Catholic feast day by tarting it up with the Bureau of Double Standards, Irony Department. You don’t see guys trolling the bars any less covered than normal; if anything, they’re blessedly *more* enclothed, what with the pirate hats and the pimp boas and the occasional cape. But women? Women put on a bodysuit and a headband featuring tiny cat ears and wonder why we aren’t President yet.

It’s the same reason, I suppose, why I haul the sarong and the flower headwreaths out of the back of the closet when Jimmy Buffett comes to town. We are offered an excuse to slut around without *really* slutting around, and God bless Spencer’s Gifts, the Official Enabler of Halloween Whoring Nights, for stocking the fishnet hose.

This year I am dressing up as a double standard, I think.

Flipping Flip

Election Fever is increasingly horrible here in The Swamp. As I am about to report in the very near future, early voting was such a positive experience that I actually went home and spewed. That is correct: I can now officially report that this campaign season has made me sick. By Tuesday night I will be throwing up things I ate last Christmas.

It’s all over but the obsessing and the compulsing and the bribing.

The recipient of this honor was Flip, a prosecutor-slash-college friend who calls me up every now and then, which was flattering until I realized that the only other women he talks to are, chiefly, crack whores.

I was devastated when Flip announced his voting intention in the general election, and even though he lives a state in which my favored candidate is up approximately 4000% over his opponent, I was determined to corral that one single solitary vote, so I enumerated several solid reasons to support the this certain program, and defended that specific budget proposal, and also offered to let Flip see me in my underwear for thirty seconds.

This is a completely legitimate offer. There would be no stripping; there would not be dancing or sampling in general; merely a full half-minute of appreciative gazing in exchange for a simple Presidential endorsement. It is a pure and simple business transaction. I have tried, over the past year, to affect this election through such avenues as prayer, financial contributions, and encouraging voter registration. I am utterly appalled that semi-nudity hasn't occurred to me until now.

This concept may be easily applied to the grassroots level. People coming at you with brochures, you’re gonna run. Women doing literature drops in their panties? The world, at minimum, is going to pull over to the side of the road to investigate the situation.

Flip said he would think about it. I should say so.

I bake when nervous.

And also sew.

I made four dozen cookies last night and eighteen dresses this morning. By election day, the entire state will be safe from hurricanes due to the large tarp I will have embroidered for it.

More Magic!

The pressures of working in any Disney capacity are immense. The employees are called “cast members,” because you are part of the “show” for the “guests”, who in fact the “cast members” really, really “hate” and want to “get rid of” via “kicking their annoying dumpy asses directly in the path of an oncoming monorail.”

Cast members exist solely in underground, labyrinthian chambers far removed from any semblance of fun. This is called “backstage”; any area that a guest might traverse over, under, through, or by is “onstage.” The Contemporary actually had a sign over a mirror in a backstage bathroom that trumpeted “YOU ARE ABOUT TO MAKE MAGICAL MEMORIES!” Because if you don’t, Mickey will fire your ass.

I first discovered this while doing marketing at EPCOT three years ago, when I found large clumps of cast members slumped over crumb-strewn tables in the cast cafeteria. This is not an American phenomenon: actual people from actual foreign nations staff the “countries” at EPCOT, and they were just as droopy as the rest of us. This is what comes of eight hours of being so close to France, if only a simulated version of it.

The next time you are in the process of dumping your entire retirement fund into any Disney park, try finding a door to the cast member areas: You can’t. They blend right in. They’re hermetically sealed. They need to be, because once offstage the cast members dissolve into piles of quiet desperation.

Magic!

Because I have no skills, and also no income, I took a temp job the Contemporary Resort at the Magic Kingdom, which was fun until the boss started referring to the guests as, quote, “fags.” WELCOME TO DISNEY WORLD!!

It was fun, for perhaps the first five minutes, driving through “property” as we wretched locals call it, racing the monorail (I have a somewhat unhealthy monorail fixation: “It’s an ELEVATED TRAIN! On a RAIL! ONE rail!”) and parking about eight feet away from Space Mountain. That’s just not something you do every day in downtown Cheboygan.

They put me in the business center of the hotel’s convention area. According to the temp agency, the position was Monday through Friday, 8-5, professional dress, Word intensive, very minor Excel, so I was not at all surprised to discover that the job actually entailed a seven-day schedule, 7 AM-3:30 PM, business casual, excessive Excel, and absolutely zero Word work.

“No math,” I’d warned the temp agency.

“Oh, you don’t have to worry about that at all,” they people told me.

“Here is the cash drawer,” said the woman who trained me. I have since bankrupted the entire Magic Kingdom.

Those of you preparing to conduct fax work or Internet surfing or general breathing within the Business Center of the Contemporary are hereby advised to sell off a few children first. Five bucks to send a fax. Per page. Want to get online? Ten bucks. Every fifteen minutes.

The thing was, I’d relay the prices, and then lower my eyes in shame to the cash drawer, and nobody ever said anything about it. These were people who had just paid eighty dollars a head to stand in very long lines with very hot and very smelly people for a ninety-second boat ride past creepy little dolls doing the can-can. Five dollars a fax was a steal.

I tended to the copy machine, for the most part, which worked perfectly unless you wanted to turn it on or reload the paper or in general copy something. I was often scheduled with Joe, who had just completed an MBA in finance, and we’d stand there, with something like five college degrees between us, two of them at the Master’s level, absolutely flummoxed by the credit card reader.

The suckitude of all this was much mitigated, however, by the food. Sometimes a banquet would end with chicken l’orange to spare, and we got to scrounge. Disney scrounge is better than meals cooked solely for me, particularly by me. I found a leftover piece of cheesecake once, and it cost something like $45,982,867,632,875,625, and it tasted like it.

Also, sometimes the chefs would come into the Business Center to copy their menus, which meant that I actually had the opportunity to say, in acutal reality: “Hi, Chef!” If just one of them had answered, “Hello there, children,”one time, I do believe I would have worked there until the end of time.

Alas, it was not to be. One morning as I sat copying, a manager stopped by to make a phone call.

You know this guy. This guy is the guy who, in the mere act of entering a room, announces “ASSHOLE A-COMIN’!” I don’t know what it is, exactly—the gelled hair, the Trump ties, the lack of an immortal soul-- but you can just tell that this is going to be That Guy who talks very loudly on his cell phone about his golf game while undertipping the bartender.

At that particular moment he was speaking with, I believe, another manager. “Here’s what this beyotch in the Fantasia Ballroom wants,” he began.

Well! It sounds as if Mr. Asshole is having a bad day! Maybe he—

“The fags from the tennis association are in today,” he continued. “Did you see those two fags at breakfast? I bet they were (really bad word) each other under the table.”

Oh my yes, we got nothing but maaaaaaaaagical memories here at the Proportedly Happiest Place On Earth.

This, of course, was excusing the morning this guy trapped me up against a counter as I quietly swore at the Excel sheet and said, “What’s going on?” Well-- a lawsuit, for starters.

Just as I was arranging for my departure I discovered that—because Irony looooooooves me—a frightening percentage of the engineers from my day job were arriving for a conference entitled Conference For Stupid Boring Hydrologists Who Lay People Off Without Warning.

I can take a hint. Fare thee well, unbalanced cash drawer.

wishing upon a sexually harassed star at: blondechampagne@hotmail.com

There's Room For Me Now

Dave Barry has retired, sort of.

column syndicates may reach me at: blondechampagne@hotmail.com

Gordo...

I believe we may declare the ‘80’s as officially over now.

We are all aware of my strong feelings regarding Mary Lou Retton, so you can imagine my galactic upset when I came upon a full-length article discussing her lifelong heartbreaking struggle with: an overactive bladder.

As previously discussed in this space, I enjoy announcing to everybody I know, as well as a whole entire Internet's worth of total strangers, that I HAVE HEMORRHOIDS. And HEMORRHOIDS are completely uncool, so I can’t imagine that it’s any more fun to have to pee all the time.

I practically do this anyway. Anyone who has been in my general vicinity while consuming anything over .000000000001 milliliters of alcohol had better prepare themselves for a conversation conducted in four-minute intervals. “’Scuse me—exit strategy for the Chablis—be right back.” Dreeeeeeeam date!

I am so glad that Mary Lou decided to share this with us. This is easily the most important celebrity endorsement of a bodily dysfunction since Jerry Mathers bravely denounced psoriasis. I cannot wait for the Oprah interview, for as we all know celebrity discomfort does not exist unless it has been publicly wept over first.

Well, the position of National Spokesperson For HEMORRHOIDS seems to be open. My life is going to be so much more awesome now.

be sure to stick the landing on the toilet seat: blondechampagne@hotmail.com

View From the Stage

Bad times here in The Swamp, what with the job losing and the vote-not-counting and the fuel injection buildup and all, but I’ve been handling it as a responsible adult should, by which I mean “with a great deal of alcohol.”

It is never a good idea to attempt to drink yourself from the brink of a potentially enormous depression. What you need to do is drink while wearing enormous amounts of hair spray and surrounded by very unattractive members of the opposite sex. Then you’re depressed and flammable.

Flipper and I, because we are old and tired, attempted to change our weekend standard of hoisting our breasts and two pina coladas while scoping a CityWalk bar for dance partners who potentially might be able to define, or even spell, words like “exponential.” It never works—sometimes it not-works to the point of asking law enforcement professionals to intervene—and we agreed that it was time for a drastic change in tactics. So (you only live once, and you gotta take chances, you, know?) we decided to hoist and drink and scope at an entirely different bar.

This plan might have worked had we actually found another bar in which to execute it. We committed a major error in attempting to find a club in downtown Orlando that 1) contained more than two people, bartenders included, and 2) did not appear to transmit syphilis via air molecules.

I can’t remember the name of this place—we chose it, after much careful deliberation, the instant we were informed, via sidewalk hollering, that ladies were admitted without a cover charge—but at this point that’s just as well, since it will make the post traumatic stress syndrome therapy that much easier to pull through.

I really don’t know what went wrong here. It seemed like a reputable enough place, judging by the largely naked woman perched in a swing behind a street-facing window. The fact that she weighed 250 pounds was nothing but encouraging: “We don’t judge by appearances, here in the Worst Bar Ever!” The walls were oozing a yellowish liquid, yes, but that was just part of the sit-down-and-immediately-contract-crabs ambiance.

We left, reluctantly, after two entire seconds. When the bouncer starts swinging canisters of nitrous oxide onto the bar next to the enormous bag of pretzels and the mini-keg, it’s time to move on.

I tore off the ID wristband I'd been given and scrubbed my entire arm raw on the concrete. It was the only way to feel clean.

It’s official, now: Orlando has the Worst. Downtown. Ever. Bear in mind that I say this as a native of Cincinnati, where the nightlife pretty much consists of two raccoons fighting over a half-eaten potato chip in front of the courthouse. We walked around for an hour, and there was more going on at the main branch of the public library, where the street people were having a better time yelling at the potted palms.

So we defaulted to Plan B, which actually was an early draft of Plan A, which, as always, involved the Council of Eight (four breasts, four pina coladas total) at CityWalk. We drove to Margaritaville, which involved finding I-4 from downtown, which, thanks to extremely assical signage, occupied an entire half hour and a great deal of swearing. It’s a good thing we don’t have a lot of tourists trying to get around, here in Orlando.

Things improved immediately, as it was Two-For-One AARP Night at Margaritaville. We were the youngest people there by, at minimum, four decades. The Margaritaville dance floor has these enormous screens near the ceilings, huge sail-like things that intermittently relay vintage footage of Jimmy Buffett singing and boating and in general gazing down upon this, the themed restaurant fashioned in his holy name. And Jimmy—you could just see it, even Jimmy was all, “Oh my God, these people are lame.”

Younger people did filter in later on in the evening, which made things infinitely worse. We were besieged, at one point, by a group of fellows clearly choppered in from 1992. Parachute pants, enormous gold necklaces, the whole entire football field: Yo yo yo yo, homey, let’s bust down to the Kid ‘n’ Play concert!!

The saving grace was the house band, Blue Stone Circle. They’re a fantastic group, equally capable of smacking around ‘90s pop as well as Southern rock. Their repertoire called for, at one point, a fiddle, and once the fiddle comes out, you know you’re done, as far as having a crap evening is concerned. The lead singer hauled some chick onto the stage, asked her to stand with legs akimbo, and as Flipper and Jimmy and all God’s children watched the fiddle player ripped off this incredible solo while holding the fiddle between her legs. It left me awestruck, and also sad, and jealous, as that was more action than I’ve gotten in the past six months. I need to find out if they have any openings for groupies, and apply.

They had skank immunity, too, these guys. At one point two all-but-unclothed women—their shifts in the swing must have just ended at the Worst Bar Ever—climbed up onto the stage, whereupon the lead singer immediately jumped overboard, along with the bass player. The keyboardist kind of squished over as much as instrumentally possible, but the poor drummer had nowhere to go, trapped as he was behind a Plexiglass acoustical break, which for his sake I hope also functioned as some sort of shield from the HELLO, I AM A VERY SEXUALLY ACTIVE PERSON smell rays emanating from these girls’ overly flabby, regrettably exposed abdomens.

And yet I had ninety minutes of happiness, there in Margaritaville, jumping up and down in the shadow of the fishing reels hanging on the walls. I was twenty-seven, with glittery hair, and dancing.

I wonder what it’s like, to be in a band with an unobstructed view of the human debris parade passing below. I think I would cast myself into one of the amps after a week, knowing that I walked the Earth with people who think it perfectly OK to wear sweatpants and a polo shirt at the same time.

If Blue Stone Circle was watching Flipper and me, they got an eyeful of two women followed around the floor by a medical technician and a person wearing a sunvisor…inside…at night.

See, the problem with dancing these days, even while young and throwing off glitter sparks, is that people can partner up with you without your consent or even your knowledge. We politely attempted to dance ourselves to another part of the floor, and yet…there they were. I once executed a spin during a particularly moving verse of “Play That Funky Music,” only to find myself face to face with The Sunvisor, soul patch and all, arms over his head, grinning at me.

“WHOOOOOOOOO!” said he.

Dance cards and chaperones, I think, were not entirely bad things.

So Flipper and I took a break outside to catch a bit of TV news and breathe air unfouled by the castoffs of Yo! MTV Raps, and discovered possible origin of The Women That Drove 45% Of the Band Offstage: Paris Hilton was in town. Not just in town, but downtown. There was a reporter standing about eight feet from one of the bars we had just left. Paris had arrived in the pod that bore her, and skanks were now running all over the city, not unlike baby spiders spilling out of Charlotte’s barn sac. The TV sound was off, but we could read Paris’ lips: “Is it my turn in the swing yet?”