Cracking Up

No, I'm not ready for a straightjacket just yet, in fact my emotional health has been quite good lately, thanks. My cracking up has been more on the laughing side lately. I keep seeing these things about that leave me gob-smacked and giggling.

Like the speech Donald "Rummy" Rumsfeld gave in Germany today. Asking for more support for our (or should that be "our") effort in Iraq. He stood in front of an international audience and said, in a statement so impassioned that I almost think he himself believed it, that the international press were making America out to be an imperialist nation (never!), and that he couldn't...no matter how he tried to....(trembling bottom lip)....understand....(trying to conjure a single tear a la Iron Eyes Cody)...why the world would want to do that to us.

He also stressed that the "seeds of freedom" need to sown throughout the world. Yeah, and we're just the guys to sow them! And he stressed the importance of "winning" in Iraq and Afghanistan, because, well, I guess because schoolyard bullies always have to win. And let's face it, folks. If the world were an episode of The Simpsons, right now the US would be Nelson. I'm just waiting for W. to come out with a "HA ha!"

I'm also still giggling, but in a much much nicer way, at a blog out there called The Beatles Are Coming. Mike, man of mystery and movies, pointed this site out to some of us a week or so ago. Now, there's a splash page to it I found during some exploring that actually explains it like: "Imagine if the internet had been around in the early 1960's! Experience the birth of Beatlemania through a daily Beatles Blog from 1964!" Well, that helps some.

See, when you just click on the blog section you get a day by day diary of a young girl experiencing the throes of Idol Worship as The Beatles come to America for the first time. It's a cute idea. In fact, it's a really cute (and sweet too, if I may say so) idea. But I gotta tell you. It's disconcerting.

First of all, there's a picture of the "blogger" on the site. Is this a picture from the sixties, or a picture of a girl today made up to look like it's from the sixties? And what's the age of the girl writing the blog? I'd love to know. Because it's written like a 15-year old girl would write. So if it's a woman who actually was 15 at the time...well, I don't know if I should be really admiring of her imagination or weirded out by it.

Anyway, the most fun part of all this is seeing her have to explain things that would have been new in the sixties, like "what is called a telephoto lens." Then she throws around phrases like "people have emailed me from all over" and "I’m typing this blog entry on Debbie’s mom’s computer. She’s rich enough to own a portable computer. It’s really neat. It isn’t that much bigger than a three-ring binder!" It's just weird, man. It's weird!

(But then again, who doesn't long for those oh-so-innocent days of 1964 and the British Invasion? I know I do.)

Finally, last night I happened upon one of the more interesting stories on "Dateline NBC" I've seen in a while. A story about David Gest, whom I'm now convinced is second freakiest man on earth only to Michael Jackson.

We knew something was wrong with him, didn't we? The marriage to Liza Minelli, MJ as best man, and that kiss that has done for lip-locks what mad cow has done for the beef industry. But we got a look into the hell that the man's life has become last night, right there on the tee vee.

OK, so he's suing Liza, not only for divorce after a mere months, but is also suing her for $10 million, because she, as he stood right up there and told us all, she beat the living shit out of him on several occasions.

That alone right there says a lot about the man. I mean, what kind of man is willing to get up there and announce that an old woman, one who's approaching Liz Taylor in the "ongoing injuries and ailments" department and is 56 years old, has beaten him up so badly that he's just a shell of his former self.

This man wants his 10 million.

It's a sad existence for David. He can't leave his multi-million dollar estate in Hawaii, presumably because he can't fly. So he walks the beach in baggy calf-length blue jeans and throws stones into the ocean, or so he'd have us believe.

But he'd also have us believe other things.

That he still has "scars" from the beatings, one of which he happily dropped his pants to show us. On his lower stomach. Looked amazingly like stretch marks, but who am I to say, really.

We also saw David make a trip to a doctor to have injection treatment for the pain. 80 injections he has to have, the poor thing. Of Botox. Injections of Botox all over his face. What a shame for him to have been beaten that badly. Poor fellow.

But even as fun as it was watching a total freak like David Gest, my favorite part by far of this segment was seeing an interview with his doctor. The one administering the Botox injections. This doctor was every doctor who's ever been caught on hidden camera in a "Dateline" scam-bust since the show went on the air. I'm not kidding - Central Casting couldn't have given us a better I'm-A-Quack-But-I'll-Do-Anything-For-My-Share-Of-The-10-Million-Prize doctor than this guy. It was priceless.

Oh, and of course, there's one more thing we need to know. He still loves her. He really does.

I'm still cracking up.