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This is the second Father's Day without my father. No, I'm not going to whine and furiously tug on your tender heartstrings again. Go look up last year's if you need that. I still miss him, I wish he was here, and I even thought about what I'd have gotten him if he was alive (probably an iPod stocked with every Frank Sinatra record ever). But this year I have more pleasant, loving thoughts and fewer self-pitying ones.

That's been interesting, because I'm in a relatively unique position now, having no father and not being a father, either. This is the way it's gonna be from here on out, I suppose, and it's odd, because it doesn't bother me that I'll never get the Father's Day treatment. In fact, this morning, I forgot all about Father's Day when we decided to have lunch out at a restaurant, only to discover that the place was jammed with Father's Day revelers, many of whom appeared to be the same people we encountered the other day at the Wal-Mart grand opening. As a result, we chose not to partake of the Father's Day brunch, which looked as if it had been attacked by people unused to serving themselves, or for whom utensil use has always been optional. Around us, large tables with several generations of Torrance families were doing what families do on Father's Day: while the kids ran around flinging handfuls of flan, the parents fought over who should pay for what. "Okay, let's see, we should pay for me and Roger and the kids... wait, who's paying for Mom? I'm not paying for Mom. Hey, there are five margaritas on here, I only had three- who had the other two? I'm not paying for that...." Happy Father's Day, Dad! Got a $20.?

That's the strange thing about Father's Day- until the kid reaches, oh, about 35, Dad ends up paying for the gifts to himself. Really, do teenagers pay for those ties or shirts? Nope, it comes from allowance, or Mom slips the kid some cash that came from Dad's salary, or the kid uses the Visa card the bill for which comes to Dad. This makes no sense. Want a real Father's Day? Let Dad buy what he wants, not a shirt or a tie but maybe a set of golf clubs or a hooker. If he has to pay, at least let him make the choice.

Actually, that would be a great business, the Perfect Father's Day Gift. Set up a charter bus trip, sell tickets: golf and hookers. Dad gets up early, gets on the bus, it goes to Vegas for golf, maybe some gambling, and then out to a legal prostitution house for what Every Dad Really Wants. Mom gets a day off, the kids don't have to shop very hard, and Dad... you know.

You tell me that wouldn't be a rip-roaring success. Not that I'd ever partake. I'm not a father, remember?

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Ache. Left arm, achy- I was lifting this afternoon and my right arm was fine, but the left arm gave me trouble. Time to take a break for a day.

Ache. The breezes are blowing the gunk in the air right between my eyes. Sinuses hurt.

Ache. Trouble with people. Try to do a good deed, and, as the saying goes, no good deed goes unpunished. Irreperable damage. Aggravation, the kind that just grabs the muscles in your chest and squeezes them together.

Life is not pain free. I got that a long time ago. You can take ibuprofen for the arm ache, you can take Benadryl for the sinus ache. For the rest, I guess you can take beer. Or you can finish the day's work, turn the computer off, walk away, and figure that tomorrow will be better. And maybe it will be.

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Computer's acting up. Hafta take care of that. I have some thoughts on radio, but they'll have to wait... Sorry...

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I could tell you how "I Wanna Be a Hilton" is quite possibly the most pointless television program ever, but that's way too easy- you need not be a professional wiseass to be able to appreciate the irony of a woman who couldn't even properly raise her own daughters trying to teach other people how to be refined upper-crust rich people- but I'd rather tell you about my new Replacement Radio.

I haven't listened to live radio for days now. I may not go back to it again. Instead, I'm getting to listen to radio shows from all over the world at my convenience- radio on demand. Stern, from the beginning, but skipping over the interminable stop sets and the boring porn star talk. Atlanta's Regular Guys teaching teenage liberal Jeff Shapiro how to be conservative and unleashing Church Chick and Gay Karaoke Satan on him. Don and Mike in Washington celebrating Mike's birthday or discussing how Don almost fell off of his roof in a lame-ass attempt to readjust his antenna to get that NBC Weather Plus channel on WRC's digital channel. Detroit's Deminski and Doyle, who I humbly admit to have discovered and hired for their first radio gig together in New Jersey, chatting with callers about what they'd save first from their houses in a fire. The incredible Tommy Mischke, mesmerizingly weird and brilliant and purveyor of dead-air pauses that would make Jim Rome green with envy. There's Leo LaPorte and friends' weekly This Week in Tech- TWiT- with actual useful computer and tech talk as well as musings about the mysterious black American Express card and the merits of plasma vs. LCD. A college student in the UK prissily reviewing classic British TV DVDs, a couple of guys babbling about HDTV in Orange County, the BBC Radio Five Live sports team talking about the week in soccer and cricket, some TV Guide editors gossiping about TV and movies, a popular Minneapolis morning show... between stuff I record and stuff I get through podcasts, I have more content than I have time to hear. But I can save it, listen when I want, listen in the car or while running or at the gym or anywhere.

I do it with a iPod, of course, but any MP3 player will do. And I like it. There are shows I can hear live that I miss and will surely listen to again (come on, John, you've been away, I'll be back), but this Radio On Demand concept works for me. I get to hear more, get to hear the kind of talk I prefer (hint: very little politics), and when all else fails, I can listen to better music than I can get on local radio. This blows away my Walkman and my car stereo. And, sure, most of what I hear is from traditional stations, but a lot of it is from stations I can't get in L.A., and it's not on someone else's schedule. This rules.

Is this going to replace regular radio? Probably not. I don't really care whether it does. All I know is that it works for me. If you like hearing shows from all over the place and want to hear them on your own time instead of missing stuff because you're not in your car at the right time, this setup's great. Don't know whether this really is a harbinger of the future of broadcasting, but it doesn't matter- I'm having fun.

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I have discovered the location of the gates of Hell. They're right about here.

I know this because we were driving down to Trader Joe's at lunchtime and we were talking about some pop song we dislike- I believe the conversation was Stefani-related, referring to S--t being bananas, B-A-N-A-N-A-S- and I made the fateful decision to put the top 40 station on, considering that we really are out of touch with the music the little whippersnappers like. And it was while we drove north on Crenshaw, down the Hill towards Torrance, when proof of our crossing over came on the radio.

This.

Looking at Jessica Simpson is perfectly acceptable, but for God's sake KEEP THE SOUND MUTED. "These Boots are Made for Walking"? From the soundtrack to- excuse me while I clear the bile from my esophagus- "The Dukes of Hazzard"? Yep, it's Hell all right.

The Hell just kept on coming, too, including an unbelievably lame mashup of Jay-Z and Nena predicated simply on the presence of the number 99 in both songs- I like my songs one at a time, thanks- but I never really recovered from "Boots." Look, some songs are not made for remaking. They shouldn't be croaked at a karaoke bar, they shouldn't be updated for the 21st Century, they shouldn't be touched, not because they exhibit greatness, but because they just can't be done any better than the first time. Nancy Sinatra? Lee Hazelwood? Perfect execution the first time out. Jessica Simpson doesn't sing it "better," because it's not the kind of song to sing "better." And the famous sleazeball descending bass isn't improved with a couple of cornball country doodles and fiddles thrown in because, remember, she's Daisy Duke and it's Hazzard County.

But she sure is purty in a disturbingly slutty, unsanitary way. If you want to ruin the soft-core ambiance, just imagine Joe Simpson with a big leering grin watching the part where she washes the General Lee in next-to-nothing.

You're welcome.

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As my friend Joe astutely noted, when a town uses the Supreme Court's eminent domain ruling to justify taking property for a commercial developer who then turns around and builds a (larger, more valuable) private home on the property, there will be even greater outrage. If the Very Rich and Famous Developer and TV Personality who owns the golf course down the street decides he wants my neighborhood to build an even more outlandishly huge oceanside mansion than he's building right next to the course, can he go to my town and turn the screws until they do what he wants? Yup, and now there's pretty much no recourse- it's up to the town to make that call.

Considering how the left and right seem to be equally appalled by the ruling, I was a little baffled as to who, other than municipal leaders and the five majority Supreme Court voters, would support it. And then it hit me:

Renters. Long-term renters, renters who have no hope of owning a house.

You have to have a healthy dislike for people with private property to think that a town should be able to scoop someone's property up for the flimsiest of reasons, or just because a private developer says so. You'd think it would be hard to find anyone who'd be OK with that, but maybe not.

If you're really into the class warfare game, this is perfect, the rich eating the rich. But this has to be hella confusing to the kind of property-owning liberal who talks a great anti-rich-folks game and would otherwise love that property owners are being nailed with this. They're in the same crosshairs. Then again, as Mr. Costello observed (surely with a nudge from his sometime writing partner Mr. McCartney), it was indeed a millionaire who said "imagine no possessions." Can't have it both ways. But, at least in the early going, it seems that most liberals and most conservatives are united in their revulsion.

Some of the homeowners in New London who brought the suit are threatening to stay put, which could lead to a Tiananmen Square-style incident, the developer's bulldozers poised and the homeowners refusing to move. If you support the ruling, you have to ask yourself which side you'd be on.

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An old friend from whom I'd not heard for about a decade or more happened upon this thing and wrote:

"Reading your website was like talking to you."

And now you know why you should be grateful this isn't an audio blog.

Yet.

(You have been warned)

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Here's the pull quote at the top of an interview of Aimee Mann by Patton Oswalt in the June-July 2005 Believer magazine:

“WE’RE THE PETER FRAMPTON OF VIOLENCE AND RELIGION. THE TERRORISTS ARE LIKE THE RAMONES.”

The web version doesn't give the full context, so here it is, from the hard copy of the magazine, Oswalt speaking:

"I remember watching those planes hit the World Trade Center, and it was horrible, and I thought 'Oh my god, those people are dying.' There was about an hour where I wanted a fascist violent response. I wanted a Judge Dredd. I wanted a Dirty Harry to wipe out every fucking person in the Middle East, But then I thought, what do I believe in as strong as flying a plane into a building? You know what I mean? Everyone's first response to that was: 'Those countries are all violence and religion. That's all it is.' Well, yes, it's all violence and religion to the terrorists, but we're the Peter Frampton of violence and religion. We're the bloated, overproduced, Emerson Lake and Palmer, late-seventies Led Zeppelin of violence and religion. The terrorists are like the Ramones. 'I'll carry my own amp, thank you. I don't need anyone to set it up for me.' They're willing to fucking burn it to the fucking ground. And that's why we had such an angry response. Just like the mainstream music industry's response to the Ramones. No wonder we went fucking crazy."

Mann points out that we didn't go crazy, which leads to a very brief discussion on Iraq (see, we DID go crazy, says Oswalt, because we "attacked the wrong fucking country"). And soon they're on to other things.

It's funny that I saw this on the newsstand shortly after hearing my friend Johnny rant on the radio about Tom Cruise's response to the guy squirting him in the face. Johnny, as far left as you can go without being Pacifica, thought Cruise's response was less than manly, that he should have belted the guy. And I agree, which takes me back to why, on the general scale of things, when it comes to things like national defense I tend towards the aggressive right. It's summed up in one simple phrase:

Sometimes, you gotta kick some ass.

Patton- who, incidentally, is a friend of several friends of mine, and whom I think is one of the funnier and better standups out there- would apparently disagree. He agreed for about an hour, but then started the "why do they hate us?" act and the "well, they certainly seem to be committed to their cause- maybe there's a good reason" motif. He clearly thinks that fighting back was wrong. And with that, he reminded me of Michael Dukakis. Yes, you remember that, the debate question about whether he'd want someone who raped and murdered his wife to get the death penalty, to which he replied, swiftly and surely: ""No, I don't, and I think you know that I've opposed the death penalty during all of my life."

Wrong answer. Better answer: "While I don't generally believe in the death penalty and recognize the inherent hypocrisy of what I'm about to say, not only would I want the fucking scumbag to die, I would personally want to rip his colon out without anaesthetic, then shove it down his throat until he choked on it. I would want him to die an agonizing death. I would want him to feel the pain. And I would not wait for a trial to take care of business."

Not everyone on the left is like that- witness Johnny- but a lot are. And it's unfortunate, because you don't have to be a pacifist wimp to object to the war. You can argue whether Iraq was a proper ass to kick. But sometimes, you gotta kick whatever ass is kickable, to send a message- don't fuck with us. In fact, it's that we're afraid of what others will think (even though it's waaaay too late for that) that the message has been muddled. You CAN fuck with us, as long as we're not finishing the job. We gotta fix that.

Oh, and about the Ramones. That Ramones-Frampton comparison is the kind of glib, empty bullshit that sounds good when you're among friends but amounts to this: you're saying the terrorists are the admirable, better people and we're the fat, boring, side you hope loses. You're equating the Greatest Band of Their Generation (and maybe ever) to people who deliberately target innocent civilians in their plan to subjugate as much of the world as possible and to oppress women, gays, and pretty much anyone who doesn't buy into their brand of extreme Islam. That doesn't work. Mr. Oswalt, leave the Ramones out of this. In fact, leave Frampton and Zeppelin out of this. Try another analogy. Maybe a funny one. I know you can do that.

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