Notes From a Strange Day.

Wake up totally exhausted and tired from not enough sleep. Already feel out of sorts. Dreamt I was living in Harrisburg. It was not a pleasant dream.

Cover of the Examiner proclaims that it comes with a free poster- as a collector's item I guess- of the cover from a year ago. The cover features a large picturesof the second plane slamming into one of the Towers with the headline "BASTARDS!" Lovely. I know I'll be putting it up in my apartment soon. The Chon, on the other hand is tastefully done with a picture of a torn and frayed American flag on the cover. Every page inside has a black border around it and the Op/Ed page has this cool thing where they have the Roman numeral IX on the top fold of the page and then the Roman Numeral XI on the bottom of the fold (think about it). Pretty cool. Whoever came up with that idea is pretty stoked. The Bay Guardian, on the other hand, has it's usual subtle cover with a headline blaring "The War At Home" with a cartoon of John Ashcroft tearing the Constitution in half while standing above the cityscape of New York like some sort of Godzilla. In the background, the Towers burn away. Hmm, I wonder what they're trying to say? I can't quite get the message here.

Get into work and put on the Howard Stern show. He's been spending most of the morning interviewing B-list celebrities about their opinion of what It All Means. I like Michael J. Fox and have nothing bad to say about him, but I don't care what he thinks about 9/11. And I'm pretty sure Jon Bon Jovi didn't really have anything illuminating to say either. Do people still have to shill themselves even on a day like this?

They start playing the rebroadcast of last year's show. There they are, talking about Howard making out with Pamela Anderson at some strip club when somebody comes in and tells them a plane hit one of the Towers. Howard looks out the window, sees the smoke and the show goes on. They joke around a bit more, then somebody comes in and says that the other tower's been hit. You can hear the moment when they realize what's up. Howard suddenly proclaims that we're under attack and Robin keeps on saying "oh my God" over and over again. The comedian who was there that day keeps on trying to make jokes but gets shut up really fast. I don't want to relive the day, but I'm sucked in. It always sucks you in. No matter how hard I try, if I see footage on some news channel, I watch for a bit. I can't help it, it just happens. I'm reliving the day again. I'm so sucked in, I don't realize I haven't taken a break in over an hour.

It's good to hear that even back then, they were making jokes about the President always being on vacation. When somebody mentions that a plane might be going towards the White House, somebody asks why they'd do something like that since the President is never there. I also get a kick out of the fact that when they play Bush's first Press Conference after the attack, they all laugh when somebody notices that one of the first things Bush says is that "he's been in contact with the Vice President." I'm so used to Bush saying stuff like that these days that I stopped noticing how idiotic it sounds. "Don't worry, I talked to somebody who knows what to do…."

The show turns into a bunch of people calling up and talking about wanting to nuke the "towel-heads." It turns into a war pep rally. Living in SF, I forget what it's like elsewhere, where Patriotism is associated with kicking butt and people seem almost gleeful about the idea of going to war. Here in SF, protestors were babbling away on a megaphone when I got out of BART and handing out flyers. At the same time as the Howard Stern show, a caller on the Sarah and No Name show starts babbling about the irony of all the memorials when "there's so much oppression in this country." Sigh. I'm not sure which argument is worse. Later, on Talk of the Nation on NPR a fight about Berkley breaks out between an ex-professor and a student there. Will everyone just shut-up?

Check my e-mail and notice that some girl named Kathy knows who I am and really, really wants to get in touch with me. She's absolutely positive we'd hit it off and I'd be able to see the same thing if I only checked out her Web site. As flattered as I am, I notice that she says she's 36. What kind of spam mail list could I be on that knows that I'm closer to 36 than 26? And that I'd prefer 36 to 26?


Great line from Maureen Dowd:

"The first President Bush has told people lately how impressed he is that his son goes to bed every night without a worry in his head.

Should the nation really take comfort in this fact?"

Go to Levi Plaza for lunch. Somewhere, there's a jazz band playing. Flags are laid out everywhere. I sit on one side of the bench and as I sit down, the person at the other end quickly gets up and leaves the bench. Bitch.

KFOG is playing all happy, relaxing tunes today. At one point, they even bust out Joey Ramone's great cover of "What a Wonderful World," a song which ironically was one of the one's banned by Clear Channel. KFOG is especially good today, much better than the other stations, which have all been playing their usual schlop. Somehow, hearing some band screaming about mommy not loving them enough and their girlfriend leaving seems kind of lame today. KFOG plays the Dead's "Ripple," a song I haven't heard in years. Forgot what a great song it was.

The Bone, meanwhile, busts out songs for it's "Workforce Lunch Break" or whatever it is they call their noon show. It's the same name they called the noon show on WMMR in Philly when I went to High School. In fact, it's the same songs that WMMR played in Philly when I was in High School The Bone is like travelling back fifteen years and pretending that nothing has changed. Somebody requests Sammy Hagar's VOA in honor of today. I love the lyrics. They're just so appropiate.

Raise the Flag! Let it wave.
Shoot them down to their graves, yeah.
Spread the news for all to hear.
We've come to fight, let's make that clear.
You push too hard, you're gonna fall.
We got fifty million rockers, we're all on guard, yeah!
We don't like it. (Oh, no!)
We can make it stop (Oh, yeah!)
We won't take it (C'mon!)
Let it rock!
You in the middle east, you be on your toes.
We're bound to strike, everybody knows.
Just tell your friends, the USSR
We're gonna, we're gonna crash that party, 'cause they've gone too far, yeah!

Yeah, you hear us? Fifty million rockers are gonna go save the world.


KSJO, meanwhile, occasionally will play a promo "in memory of the victims" which comprises of Hendrix's National Anthem, a Bush speech, and Gene Simmons telling everyone how much he loves America. Thanks Gene. And nothing quite stirs the soul like the playing of that promo right before Van Halen's "Hot For Teacher."

Hear snippets of one of Bush's speeches today on the radio. Once again, I get that jealous feeling I get whenever Bush speaks- that the older Generations in times of trouble, got FDR and JFK. We got W. It's….just….not…..fair…… I want an FDR. Wouldn't you love to know what European leaders say about our President behind his back and when there's nobody around to hear them? Sigh.

The Giants lose 7-2. Oh well. I guess asking for a three game sweep of the Dodgers is still too much. There both tied for the Wild Card now. Hang onto your seatbelts.

And Johnny Unitas died today. Wonder what's gonna be a bigger story in Baltimore tomorrow, the 9/11 celebrations or Johnny Unitas' death?

Coming home from work, I read the SF Weekly. It's got a great bit about what else has happened on 9/11. Ironically, on this date, Henry Hudson first stumbled upon Manhattan way back in 1609 and in 1941, construction starts on the Pentagon. It's also the anniversary of the issuing of the Ken Starr Report. I wonder which date did more harm to America, the Ken Starr Report or the terrorist attacks. Yes, the terrorist attacks led to war and thousands of people's death, but the report was the culmination of a complete waste of everyone's time and energy when everyone should have been doing something more important. Like why this weird guy with a beard kept on going on TV and declaring war on the United States and blowing things up.

The Bay Guardian's main editorial criticizes the war in Afghanistan. Which makes them one of maybe five people who still thinks it was a bad thing to (notice I said the war, not what's going on now or how we've completely abandoned the poor Afghans or how we might have let Osama escape because we were too afraid to put soldiers on the ground in Tora Bora.). in the Editorial, they call an article by Thomas Friedman about 9/11 as "glaringly naïve analysis of the geopoltics of the Sept. 11 attacks" and then adds that it's "laughable." Let's see, whose opinion should I trust more about 9/11, an editor of a lame free weekly paper or a Pulitzer Prize columnist for the New York Times? Apparently, Noam Chomsky is more of an authority of the Middle East than Friedman.

MTV's playing Bob Marley and Aimee Mann tonight. Wha?

You know, at the end of the day, I realize that the only thing that matters is that it's only four days until the Premiere of the Sopranos. And from all the commercials, Meadow's doing a lot of slinking around in tight outfits.

Mmmmm……Meadow.