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A week or two ago, I started to hear of a movement among some offended conservatives to protest the opening of the movie "Bad Santa." Their reasoning appeared to follow this logic:

1. Santa is nice, not bad.
2. Children shouldn't ever be told that Santa is bad.
3. A Santa that swears, smokes, drinks, and has sex is offensive.
4. Ergo, "Bad Santa" is offensive and bad for children.

This made me want to see the film, and I did. It's apparent that the complainers, including esteemed folk like Dennis Prager and Michael Medved, hadn't, and while I doubt they'd have liked it if they'd seen it, it does conform to many of their cultural criticisms, and it's another reason why cultural conservatives lose me and, I think, mainstream America every time they go on another campaign against the filth spewing forth from Hollywood. It boils down to this:

1. This movie is for adults.
2. This movie is for adults.
3. This movie is for adults.
4. There is nothing wrong with movies made to amuse adults.
5. If you don't like the premise of a movie, don't buy a ticket.

You know all that, and I think even the complainers would recognize that these points are valid. But there's a "protect the children at all costs" mentality at work that triggers the "this movie is bad for America" reflex. Let's see if we can't just ease some minds here:

1. This movie is NOT about Santa Claus being bad. It's about a bad guy who poses as a department store Santa (with his pal, who plays an elf) to rob the store on Christmas eve.
2. He is also a "bad Santa" in the sense that he does not look like Santa, does not behave like Santa, and in the real world would never be allowed in the mall, let alone be paid to be a Santa.
3. This movie does not take place in the real world.
4. Santa Claus- and I have to be careful here, because this may come as a shock to some readers- is a fictional character. Not real. Fiction. Made up. There is no North Pole toy workshop, there's just some factory somewhere where locals play elf for low wages to build dolls and PlayStation 2s. (Oh, and by the way, "Elf" is also fiction.)
5. Even one of the most revered Christmas movies ever, "A Christmas Story," featured a horrible department store Santa who operated like a factory foreman, pushing kids through as if on an assembly line, sending them hurtling down a long slide whether or not they'd been able to squeak out their request.
6. WHY DO I HAVE TO EXPLAIN THIS? It's JUST A MOVIE. A MOVIE.

There were no children in the audience at the showing we attended- a matinee, no less. The kids were at "The Cat in the Hat," which, from what I can tell, is far more likely to damage kids, what with Mike Myers doing erection sight gags and behaving like Mario Cantone on crystal meth. (Believe me, if you knew who Mario Cantone is, you'd get the joke. And you'd agree) "Bad Santa" is a reasonably funny movie, but it's not a kiddie movie. It's for adults. There is nothing wrong with this. It will not harm children (and neither will telling them that there is no Santa, and that those toys at Christmas time are obtained through the hard work of Mommy and Daddy and that they're being given out of love, that they're not the result of some obese busybody squeezing down the chimney but rather are purchased by Mommy and Daddy and lovingly wrapped and placed under the tree, and the kids' joy on Christmas morning is worth every penny to Mommy and Daddy).

But the cultural conservatives insist on protecting the nation from the scourge of adult humor, which is why they'll never quite get people like me, and, I'd say, most other people under the age of 70, to wholeheartedly join the conservative movement. I'm sorry, but I see a scraggly Santa puking in the alley behind a bar where he'd just consumed one too many Old Granddads and I laugh. And any political group that can't laugh with me won't get me as a member.

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This is not going to be one of those days when I have time to write one of those long columns that I usually do when I want to torture you.

Nor will it be one of those days when I write something short yet cogent and interesting.

No, this is one of those days when I had so much to do for other parties, including listening to a LOT of radio, that, well, 24 hours is not enough.

I should have more time tomorrow. Maybe not. It'll be fun to see, won't it?

Not really.

Sorry.

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"So," a friend asked me today, "can anyone beat Bush?"

It's early, I said, but so far, I don't see it, not among this crop.

"Damn," he said. "I can't stand the thought of four more years of this asshole."

Get used to it, I said. Besides, he spends like a Democrat, so you should be happy.

"I dunno, I can't stand that guy."

And there's the Democrats' problem at this stage. They aren't going to win an election on a platform of We Hate Bush. The Republicans found out in '96 how bad that kind of campaign can be. They need an issue, but, so far, they haven't found a winner. Anti-war? If the public hasn't turned 100% against our presence in Iraq by now, it ain't happening, and, besides, the anti crowd hasn't given a coherent, sensible answer as to what they'd have done differently (nobody buys the "we'd have negotiated a peace plan" idea). Economy? It's growing rapidly. "Jobless recovery"? Looks like jobs are coming back. Abortion? Still legal. Prescription drugs? Bush stole that one. Education? Same thing.

So what can they do? They need something big to change things between now and next November, but it puts them in the untenable position of rooting for really bad things to happen to America. They need an economic collapse, millions jobless. They need another attack so they can point to Bush's ineptitude. They need a disaster to befall their own country. How can you win with that?

They won't. Not at this rate, anyway. But it's early, and my friend need not despair. If he wants a president who stands for big, intrusive government and new programs and policy initiatives galore, he has one now. In that sense, he can't lose.

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This week has put my mind through the wringer.

Couldn't you tell?

We're barely past the halfway mark and I'm completely fried. It's been a combination of factors: a lot of extra work from several sources, more deadlines, and some personal matters that need long-distance attention. It's regular life, magnified, and I'm holding up, barely. Poor Fran and Ella the World's Most Famous Cat (TM) have been watching all of this, helpless, and I feel sorry for them- this can't be pretty, me frazzled and trying to do three things at once, but it's all stuff that I have to do.

Ella, for her part, knows something's off- she keeps bringing me the ball for some fetch-playing, but my reaction isn't the usual good-natured capitulation. I've been irritated, shooing her away, and she knows something's not quite right with me. Fortunately, a cat's attention span is extremely short, and she hasn't given up. And at some point, she'll be rewarded with some pretty intense petting and ball-playing. (That doesn't sound right, does it?)

The bright side is that I should return to some semblance of normal by the weekend, which I pray will include a lot of sleeping. Haven't done much of that lately, and I've been anticipating the alarm earlier than usual- I've been up and unable to go back to sleep by about 4 am every morning. So I'm a wreck.

And all of that's an excuse, I know. I haven't returned all calls, I haven't been writing what I would consider sterling prose, I haven't necessarily made the best decisions, but at least I've kinda maintained as steady a course as could be expected under the circumstances. And, yes, I am begging for everyone's forbearance while I get through all of this, and yes, I am being way too cryptic about what's been going on. Sorry, but that's the way it has to be. Someday, I'll write a book about it. I hope that book is a long, long way off.

Tomorrow: either partial recovery or more excuses. Plus, my first impressions of satellite radio. I know, you can't wait. Fine, but I have to WRITE it first.

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The other day, I watched a sporting event on TV that had everything. It was exciting, tense, thrilling. There were surprises, upsets, twist endings. The scores were close, the competition fierce.

And there were free drinks.

Yes, poker.

It was on when I was on the cross-trainer at the gym. There are four sets in the cardio room- one's on Fox, one's on ESPN, one's usually on A&E, Discovery, or ABC, and the last is usually CNN. And I'm looking at Neil Cavuto's mesmerizing hair when I catch what looks like the saddest casino in Vegas, with the most ill-clothed people ever on television- polyester and nylon, loud patterns, foam 'n' mesh trucker's caps worn not in the ironic aren't-I-clever Ashton Kutcher manner but without any conscious thought whatsoever.

I couldn't turn away.

It was Texas Hold 'Em, each new flip of the community cards making hearts stop just for a second. Huge stacks of chips. Fat guys in Hawaiian shirts, skinny Vietnamese guys in polyester Haggars, a street-talking guy in a Steve Francis jersey, the old blue one with the stripes and rockets. Thousands and millions of chips at stake on each hand. Losers bolting from the table and walking straight out the door, winners leaping in triumph or just silently pumping a fist with pride. You don't get this just anywhere. Plus, you can play even if you're fat and fifty- in fact, that's an advantage, because you're used to long periods of sitting on your flabby butt. How cool is that?

It did strike me as absurd that guys throw tons of cash on the table on what amounts to pure luck. Skill has little to do with it, other than being able to determine on the fly how much money to bet. It's like betting on a coin flip- no, worse, because a coin flip has way better odds. Why would you do it?

I don't care. It was still a lot of fun to watch. I admit I've said as recently as last week that watching poker on TV is ridiculous. Consider me converted. It's the sport of the new millenium.

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The latest addition to the Simon gadget arsenal: satellite radio. I came into possession of a Sirius receiver, the Audiovox shuttle PnP model, for testing out, and I can't really get into detail on the programming for reasons too arcane to explain here, but after playing with it for a few days, I have some initial observations, which I imagine apply to XM as well (XM, of course, is invited to supply a SkyFi for similar testing).

1. Installation is easy enough. I did it myself with relative ease. But...

2. Getting a signal indoors is a bitch and a half. Even at a window with clear southern exposure, the signal dropped out with alarming regularity. My solution involved taking the antenna across a little utility alley behind my office and nailing it to a fence facing up, then stringing the wire across the alley and through the window. So we have a thin black wire across the alley about 6 1/2 feet above the ground, which would be a problem if we were that tall, but we're not. At that location, the antenna gets a clean, uninterrupted signal most of the day- it weakens at night, though, when the marine layer rolls in.

3. Car installation's easy, too, except for one small local problem- the FM transmitter, which sends the signal through your car radio on an unoccupied channel on the FM dial, can do so on four frequencies, 88.1 through 88.7. This is fine for everyplace in the U.S. except one- here, where there's a station available on each of those channels. When the broadcast signal comes in with any kind of strength, it interferes with the satellite stream. 88.1's useless here due to the Long Beach jazz station, which overwhelms the Sirius signal. The other three have their good and bad spots, with signals coming in from San Diego, Santa Barbara, Northridge, Claremont, and even Catalina. 88.7 seems to work the best, but it's a pain.

4. Programming doesn't always matter. These things- the Sirius shuttle and, from what I've seen, the XM SkyFi- are a blast to use. Tons of channels, menus that tell you what's playing on all the channels, song titles and artists on screen, and the same clear sound everywhere (except for our hill). It's just a really cool little thing, even if it heats up a little too much with use.

I think that, so far, the best thing about having one of these, besides uninterrupted music in any format variation you'd want, is that the on-screen readout lets you know who does a song without waiting for the jock to backannounce, which, of course, they never do on broadcast radio anyway. I've been listening to the sort-of-adult-college-rock channel (indie bands, the stuff college radio played before college radio moved on to playing the same Limp Korn stuff commercial stations play), and I'm hearing some bands for the first time. It's noce to know who they are.

Second best is unique to Sirius so far, play-by-play coverage of every NBA and NHL game. It's nice to hear the Sixers broadcasts from WIP 3,000 miles away; now, if only all the feeds had consistent quality (tonight's Nets-Bucks game, picked up from WOR New York, is nearly unlistenable- there's another station interfering, probably at the source).

I haven't listened to a lot of the talk offerings- I have checked out Mike Church's uncensored show and the "Our Time" show Karen Kay and Hilarie Barsky do for CFUN Vancouver, but I've heard both several ties before. I didn't catch Pamela Anderson yet- I'm not sure I want to- and a lot of the other stuff is Brand X/small syndicator talk programming, all of which I've heard. There is the gay channel- when I checked in there, the hosts were playing Cranium on the air. Uh... OK.

So far, then, I've determined, basically, that once people get their hands on one of these, it's likely that they'll want to keep it. The price is a deterrent, though- it ain't cheap, and if you want it in more than one car (Fran has been looking at this thing with covetous eyes), it's going to set you back a lot of cash. I haven't decided whether it's worth the price, but whereas I was a decided skeptic before, I'm a lot less skeptical now that I've played around with it.

Now, if I can only figure out why the clock runs an hour later than it is.

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This is when we gloat.

It's too much of a cliche to talk about our 70-and-sunny when it's 25-and-snowing back where we used to live. It is, however, what we do, and it's partly an attempt to validate why we live in California despite quakes, fires, smog, pestilence, and the Clippers, and partly- mostly- the innate tendency of humans to enjoy misery from a safe distance. We watch the scenes from New York on TV- the local New York Johnny Mountain/Fritz Coleman equivalents working themselves into a lather over every quarter inch- and remember our days sliding around the highways and shoveling out from under and we think, man, don't miss that at all. The good times- the beauty of the countryside and even the city under its blanket of white, playing in the white stuff, the familiar crunch/squish of the snow under each bootstep- don't factor into it. We watch, we laugh, we feel somehow superior by dint of location.

Yes, it's fun to watch the snow coverage. I think that's the secret of the Weather Channel- it's like a one-stop shop for natural disaster coverage, and everyone loves natural disasters as long as they're not in our backyards. It's just how life works- we had fires for the amusement of the folks back east, and they have blizzards for us. It's nice to see that kind of reciprocity these days.

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