Skooter Libby Libby Libby Canned Pineapples

So,

I guess I am back to living in America for real, I am personally caught in a medical care vs. other bills crossfire. It is demeaning, that is all I can say right now, and I am thinking more and more about issues of the chronically ill. Something is really wrong with how I am being treated by the insurance industry, medical industry and financial institutions. And the answer, "Why should you be any different from anybody else." is really fueling a brighter fire in my head and heart. What a convenient lie that is to keep people from believing they can't organize against something as ghastly as not being able to pay for the medicine that enables you to have life. My answer to that question will now be, "Because you should be treated different from everybody else also."

I would love to talk about Scooter Libby, but I will talk about my new found love for Tom Sizemore and the show Shooting Sizemore (it sounds like a porn star's documentary, but he is one now). I know, I know. This is another boring train wreck via the idiot box (and who does the idiot box better than VH1? - - NO ONE ELSE!). But I do have a soft spot for Robert Downey Jr. and it goes into overhaul for Tom Sizemore (Mickey Rourke could have achieved a spot in my sublime pantheon, but his plastic surgeon ruined it for me).


This second tier love has to do with the fact that they are tormented artist first and foremost, but it is also the whole tie me up, tie me down self abuse they are trying to deliver themselves from. Drugs, strange sex habits and spurts of anger are interesting things to follow while they are doing great work like Saving Private Ryan, True Romance and Natural Born Killers. They are Hollywood IT men turned to Charles Bukowski chic parodies of themselves, who must overachieve to survive themselves. I love it! There is something very American about this process as we move from 15 minute of fame culture to an entire "television season" of fame that knocks the facade clean off (with careful editing of course). It goes back to the idea of confession as redemption, but now we have the added twist of "reformation" that we have not seen until our technological age. To relapse is to be both witness and witnessed. Weren't the puritans wonderful people!

I was captivated from the time Sizemore sitting with a facial mask in the Northern light of a Canadian sun chomps down on a spoonful of oatmeal. The effect is an illuminate ultra-violet glow to his smooth facial mask which contrasts with the rest of the room. He is a kabuki actor, even on his off time. His anxiety, his particular flavor of angst, his past, his isolation, his career and his detachment from drugs mixes into an everyman close-up, a broken metrosexual, a heterosexual alien munching on Quaker instant Oats.

On top of that he has a personal assistant named Luree. I need a Luree in my life. She reminds me of the inventory managers and female truck drivers I dealt with in LaVergne, Tennessee. Chain smoking, screaming, yelling, realistic, one-day-at-a-timers and aware of how to take care of every little situation in every paper ridden detail. Luree, like them, is a good reader of character. They are a perfect match. Luree is like a barren wet nurse that knows nothing about delivering babies, wiping asses or singing a cradled enfant to sleep. She simply knows how to keep a grown man to task.

So, between I Love New York (which is a total hot mess), and Shooting Sizemore my television consumption is pretty consistent. BBC, Euronews, Fox's Soccer Channel and Rome fall through New York and Sizemore's natural rhythm. I don't watch, Lost, Ugly Betty, Grey's Anatomy or The Amazing Race. CNN is becoming boring now that it focuses basically on child abductions/molestations and the 2008 election. And a good number of shows on PBS don't catch my eye anymore in a world where things are so evident to me.

I spend most of my time on the computer. My media diet consists more and more of old 70''s and 80's footage of Fela Kuti, Nina Simone and Paulinho da Viola. Then there is the required time on monster.com and mediabistro.com, not to mention networking and talking about work with former colleagues.

So, Scooter, I am sorry, I just don't have the time to follow you the way I want.

This guy is pretty intriguing. His silence and face betray a lot to me . . .

And to Lindsay Lohan, I did not even know who you were until last year. Gosh, there is so much interest in you and that former Miss America that it makes me nervous. Please, who cares. I wish you the best in gaining weight and I sincerely wish that one beer was enough for you. You are so young, maybe not even 21 if a year over that, hell.

There is so much to live for and to explore, don't do it all at once.

And, Fergie, I just listened to the lyrics of "Fergalicious" for the first time. Nice production. Nice delivery. And I just heard your speaking voice on the VH1 commercial for the Superbowl show. Girl, you sound like a black girl. But for the life of me I can't remember which one you were on Kids Incorporated.