I was going to talk to you about my recent experiences with acupuncture. It was quite an experience. Especially for someone who hates needles. But for some reason, I don’t feel that funny. I just had beers with the girl who started the Bad Season. Jen P. is much better after the bad season. She is living with her boyfriend, who despite all accounts, does in fact exist. We were remembering the Bad Season and that she started it with her boyfriend. Jeez, that was two years ago. The scars are still fresh. There is an island off the coast of Maine called Hell’s Half Acre. It has about six trees on it. A bunch of huge boulders. The tide, in fact, separates some of those rocks from the island itself. The island is, not surprisingly, a half acre big. Hell’s Half Acre is somewhere between Mount Desert Island and Isle au Haut. You need sea kayak to get there. I slept on one of those boulders many years ago. It was cold, even in summer. Some of us slept on this rock. We raced satellites. It was so clear that we could pick from a number of satellites. You simply chose the one you figured would cross the sky first. Late that night or early that morning, someone woke me up. I believe it was a girl named Lindsey. She told me it was cold. Seems like an obvious thing to say. They, the other people on the rock, were heading back to the tents. I, however, was resolve to sleep on the rock. Cold and all. The sky was so large so clear that I don’t think I have ever seen anything to rival it. But the tide had nearly swallowed the rock. I was cold; it was true. And so there I tried to sleep, alone and cold. But no matter how hard I tried to sleep, I couldn’t. I was cold. But more than that, I was alone and cold. I made a decision. I acquiesced sometime around three in the morning, hopped off the rock, trudged to my tent, collapsed on three other people, and slept. This is, I believe, is the Season of Great Decisions. We can stop kidding now. We can stop pretending now. We have been in “the real world” for long enough. We know ourselves well enough. And now it is time for decisions. Do we stick to jobs we hate? Do with stay in places that are unhealthy to us? Do with stay with people who are unhealthy for us? Yes, my friends, this is the Season of Great Decisions. I am on the road. It gives me time to think. Sometime clearly, and sometime not. I have made a few decisions, though not Great ones. It is stupid to have and not to share. That is decision one. We all are endowed with more than we know what to do with. This is not a measure of wealth but of heart. Share it. There is another Great Decision that weighs upon me. I am thinking of stopping The List. Three years is a long time. Maybe I am just fishing for compliments. Maybe I am tired. Maybe I am weak. But do you, each and every one of you care to be a part of my rants? I am think that this forum might be better suited just on the website, or not at all. I want your input. This season has been named; you have been warned.

Besides all the clamor over memorials on the mall, military reshaping, and jingoism, today serves a very important part in the identity of our nation. Besdies the the commercializaton of history by the film industry, today serves as a day to reflect within our own personal context for things. It is a good time to ask your grandfather and grandmother what happened from their perspective. Of all the celebrations, I still think that Rolling Thunder is, far and away, the most American, and most honest of celebrations. In other news, Representative Joe Moakley has died. He served Massachusetts and the nation for years and will be missed. To change the subject completely, Joe and I were at lunch today on 17th street. And there amidst very “out” people were two men having lunch. Their were wearing military dress whites. (I think Navy to be exact.) The first question was, are they dressing up or are the real thing. I’ll let you come up with you own second, third, and fourth question. Just remember, don’t ask, don’t tell.

(I am pissed off and way grumpy. In fact, I am so grumpy, I may win the grumpypants away from Chris W.) I am in Cincinnati. There are no visible race riots, but it is raining and that has kept the crowds down. I am in a hotel that smells of old soggy business travelers. As Tom Waits wrote, “and you take on the dreams of those who stayed there before you.” The curtains in my room are a color that, well, the closest thing I can come up with is cotton candy, not the blue kind, but the shocking pink kind. I can feel myself getting a tan from their eerie glow. The fucking “i” key on my keyboard is working intermittently. This may not seem like a big deal until you try logging into a machine with the username “iglazer.” God, do I hate laptops. I also have begun to hate cell phones. Not because you can never get signal when you need it, but because we all have become to attached to them. I hate the sound of their ring. I hate listening to other people’s conversations and then them getting pissy at you for looking at them as they blab away. I hate that people (and I am guilty of this too) forsake those who are with them for some squawky voice on a tiny plastic phone. I just hate the social implications of cell phones. Write a fuckin’ letter! PS I think that I have sufficiently proven my grumpypantsedness… hand ’em over Warner. I am in Cincinnati to do a floorshow. Those of you not in a business where there are floorshows, lemmie splain them to you. You, the vendor, sit a little table and have some collateral and some give-aways. People come by pretend to be interested in what you have to say and what your collateral says, and then strips you bare of your give-aways… consider it collateral damage. Worse yet, the person I am supposed to be sharing this hell isn’t here… so it is me and only me. I am paying for my sins… worse yet, I am paying for the sins I have yet to commit. What a Jewish condition. Kudos to Ken for introducing me to a band called Lemon Jelly. They bare not relation to Green Jello. They do, however, bravely ask the musical question, “What do you do in the bath?” Check them out.

The Post ran an article this Sunday on how the First Chimp has contradicted his assistants like Powell in front of them in meetings. That Chimpo seemingly pulls an answer from the air and sticks to it no matter how remarkably wrong it is. For example, “We will defend Taiwan.” The next day his aides were saying, “What the President meant to say was, we won’t be chaning the murky policy we have right now.” Another example, “I like oil.” Aides responded with, “What the president meant to say was, eat me.” (Okay, I might have made that one up.) Check out, http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A24644-2001Apr30.html Not only is the content of the article concerning, but the picture of Evil Cheney about to give someone the Vulcan Nerve Pinch is even more terrifing. Increased production over conservation… does anyone else feel the 70s coming back. All we need is a rise in cocaine popularity and music that has a 2 4 beat so strong that white people can feel it.

It’s Spring. The cherry blossoms have blossomed. With blossoms come bees, birds, and tourist. Ah yes, ladies and gentlemen, the tourons are coming, the tourons are coming. And what can we expect from this new crop of gullible gawking goobers? Traffic, for a start. Apparently, the basic nationally-known traffic rules are some how different in Washington. Simple rules, like - green means go and red means stop. I think that we ought to institute “National Use Your Freakin’ Turn Signal Day” some time around Memorial Day. What else can this year’s yokels provide? Much needed dollars for a our region? Naw, I doubt it. At best we’ll get some bumbling fool trying to trade in Confederate money for 5 for $10 t-shirts on the Mall. We’ll also get the comic mislabeling of historical places. Everyone knows that thing with the big dome is the White House and that large stone obelisk is the Washington Memorial and that thing where Thomas Jefferson is standing is Monticello. (No joke, I was on a flight recently with high school students on their class trip to DC. And yes, they provided the content for this paragraph. Apparently, civics class in California (where the students were coming from) is optional.)

Okay, this is terrifying. I mean come on… you are walking along minding your own business and the next thing you know a huge inflatable moose is following you down the street… a huge goofey smiled moose. I could happen to you. It happened to me on Saturday. It was a Cherry Blossom Festival Parade… what a day: gray and rainy… and not a cherry blossom in sight. So, as Ken pointed out, the Department of Defense needs a huge order of eye glasses, Coke-bottle variety. Our captains hit boats. Our pilots hit planes. Next we’ll hear that our tank drivers are driving through Taco Bells… literally. Careful now, watch carefully as the tax-cut issue occupies our minds while we slide ever so gently into a minor land war in Asia. (And we have all seen the Princess Bride and know not to get in to a land war in Asia.)

So what is foot and mouth disease? Besides the fact that because of it, the UK has to kill something like 2 million sheep. (Insert sheep-shagging joke here.) According to an official site in the UK… Foot and Mouth disease is a highly infectious viral disease of cattle, pigs, sheep and goats characterized by the development of blisters in the mouth causing considerable salivation and on the feet resulting in lameness. Death is not usual but animals cease gaining weight and production in dairy cattle falls. There, aren’t you glad I looked that up for you? My trip back to Edinburgh was awesome. The city has really become much more cosmopolitan, more European. This to some is a good thing and others a bad thing. A lot of this change was triggered by the newly form Scottish Parliament. I saw the Parliament’s Debating Hall. A typical Scottish debate runs something like the following: MP from John ‘o’ Groats: Yeeesssss! MP from Kinlochewe: Nooooo! MP from John ‘o’ Groats: Yeeesssss! MP from Kinlochewe: Nooooo! MP from John ‘o’ Groats: Yeeesssss! MP from Kinlochewe: Nooooo! MP from John ‘o’ Groats: Yeeesssss! MP from Kinlochewe: Nooooo! MP from John ‘o’ Groats: Yeeesssss! MP from Kinlochewe: Nooooo! MP from John ‘o’ Groats: Yeeesssss! MP from Kinlochewe: Nooooo! It is strange going back to a place that you lived in a long time ago and seeing some things have changed and others haven’t. One thing I still can’t get over the shock of is seeing Scottish women with fake tans. Yes sir, there is nothing stranger than a typically pasty-faced Scot with bright ORANGE skin. It just is unsettling. So in the rush to leave for vacation, and my previous trips, I realize that we all missed a very important anniversary. Sometime around the end of February was the Tuesday Night List 3 Year Anniversary. Now, I know that this is short notice, but I think we all can dig deep, show up around 9:30 or so and celebrate the simple fact that another Tuesday has arrived.

I am in LA right now… by way of Texas. Jeez, I love this travel thing. The following is something I wrote on a plane back from Texas to DC. I am not going to be at Toledo tomorrow, but that’s no reason for you not to be. i March 1, 2001 4:33pm EST AA DFW - IAD I am sitting under a life raft. ? A life raft? I am at 33,000 feet in a 727. I am sitting under a life raft? So let me get this straight… The plane a gracefully landed on the mirror serene ocean. Calmly the stewardesses, instruct us to put on our life jackets. We sit, silently, like an obidient classroom. This lithe little ladies push the appropriate buttons (four of them) and the 42 person raft, a wadded ball of yellow plastic, drops happily from the cieling like an oversized smilie-face. We sit calmly, seatbelts still fastened. Oh my. A bit of water is seeping through the carpet below my feet. The stewardesses haul the single life raft to an exit row with open window over the wing. Calmly, exactly 42 passengers, filed out of the cheerfully floating plane, on to the wing. They hop into the now inflated life raft. Off for adventure. Meanwhile, the rest of the passengers sit silently, hands folded on their laps. And as the cold black water sneaks up over my head, I wonder if I am free to move about the cabin. OR The plane hits the water like a Gallager-esque sledgehammer into an overripe watermellon. First class is no where to be seen. Water is gushing in where the front of the plane used to be. Amidst the cacophonous screaming and wailing, I hear the guy next to me say, “Hey, we’re sitting under a life raft.” “Fuck this shit,” I yell jumping up in my seat and start mashing the buttons and pull-tabs to get the life raft out. It falls on me like the tons of bricks it is. This thing can float?! Feeling the water at my groin, I figure that following instructions at this point will only lead to an early grave. I pull the overly labled, “Do Not Pull Until Outside” tab. The yellow hulk of plastic explodes outward as the nitrogen canister starts pumping gas into the wrapped plastic mess. The expanding boat pins me and the guy next to me under itself just inches above the waterline. “Nice move, asshole,” says the guy next to me. I shrug my shoudlers and start wadding out from under the now sinking semiplane. Getting clear of the giant yellow plastic oppresor, I find that, in fact, the front of the plane is mostly not there. Somehow me and a couple of pissed off business travelers haul the still expanding yellow Big Bird-sized rubbery ducky out of the semiplane and into the open ocean. “Well,” I say cracking open one of the $4 beers that another person in the raft salvaged, “Even with this wind, we’ll probably be late. Fuckin’ United!”

I have a drawer of socks. (I’m sure that most of you have something similar as there are very few ways to store socks besides a drawer or possibly a basket.) I am puzzled, though, by this sock drawer and why I can’t seem to get all my socks in it and still close the drawer easily. Socks are a convenient way, when packing a suitcase, to take up the spaces that occur in between shoes or in the corners of the case. Socks provide an ideal way to maximize every useful bit of storage in a suitcase. But here’s the odd thing about socks and drawers, socks are not self-leveling. Unlike water, which if you put in a drawer, will find its own level. Socks simply do not level themselves out. So when you try and close your drawer of socks, it never closes easily. Some little bit of a sock you never wear is always sticking out in place or another. Can you imagine a drawer of self-leveling socks such that when you put a sock in it, the drawer reorganizes itself to accommodate the socks perfectly ensuring that the drawer will close? Wow!

The day is upon us. The day which is proof that global conspiracies exist. Yes, that’s right. It’s almost Valentines Day. I hate Valentines Day. I hate what it does to people. I hate how god-awfully stupid people act. It generally makes me want to wear a large foam hand (with middle finger extended) and walk around restaurants mocking people. But why, Ian? Why do you have such amazing bile for this innocuous holiday? A day to express love and joy and… SHUT THE FUCK UP! (Sorry, I know this is a family show, but I am having a hard time holding back) The day is the biggest conspiracy of all. FTD, Hallmark, Zales, and Ronnie Mervis have all teamed up to bring us this ridiculous day. Why exactly do we need to be reminded of the people around us and how much we care for them? Shouldn’t we be doing that every day? And why is this the only day of the year that the average guy tries to figure out a) what being romantic is and b) tries to implement on that plan? Folks, let’s face it, if you spend 364 days of the year being an uncaring, unromantic, belly-button-lint-picker, you are not going to get it right on Valentines Day… it just ain’t gonna happen. With that in mind, please, stay at home, don’t try to be cute by buying wilted roses from some guy on the street corner, don’t attempt to write a sonnet (especially if all you can think of is “There once was a man from Nantucket.”) At any rate, it took me 2 hours to get to work this morning… 2 hours to go 16 miles. I walk faster than that. In fact, I walk backwards faster than that. Ah, love is in the air.