What a maroon...

OK, I'm in a bad mood, so that probably doesn't help matters much, but I'm sorry. Johnny Depp gave an interview in Rolling Stone recently where he talked about Keith Richards, and how cool he is.

What exactly is cool about watching a 60-something guy stumble and teeter around and try desperately to pretend he's still 25?

Frankly, his sort of antics aren't even cool when you're 25, but they are just pathetic when you're 65.

And it's sooo dorky for Johnny Depp to think that this guy is any kind of cool.

I'll tell you the same thing I have been saying for years:

Grow up
Get a haircut
Get off the dope
Try listening to some real music for a change

Frank Sinatra. Now that cat was cool...

File Under: Smoked Too Many Doobies in the 60s

Many moons ago, when I mentioned to my seester (not The Clam, the other one) that I was going to rent "The Wall" (the Pink Floyd movie), she told me that, unless I was planning on getting stoned first, the movie wouldn't make sense to me. I scoffed at her, but at the same time never rented the movie. Well, now I understand what she was saying. There are things which (apparently) make perfect sense when you're stoned out of your gourd that are beyond those of us in the sober world...

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/04/18/commentary.plate/index.html

Plate: Let's lay down our right to bear arms

This was the part that really got me:

"Let me explain. Some misguided people will focus on the fact that the 23-year-old student who killed his classmates and others at Virginia Tech was ethnically Korean. This is one of those observations that's 99.99 percent irrelevant. What are we to make of the fact that he is Korean? Ban Ki-moon is also Korean! Our brilliant new United Nations secretary general has not only never fired a gun, it looks like he may have just put together a peace formula for civil war-wracked Sudan -- a formula that escaped his predecessor.

"So let's just disregard all the hoopla about the race of the student responsible for the slayings. These students were not killed by a Korean, they were killed by a 9 mm handgun and a .22-caliber handgun."

I'm sorry - I know I haven't been following the story 24/7 like a good little girl, but who exactly is focusing on the fact that the shooter is Korean? (Except for Koreans themselves, who are apparently mortified that one of their number could do such a thing. I simply found it hugely ironic that, much like SAT scores, Asians even out-performed your average white guy in this horror. Bell Curve, indeed.)

OK. That was tasteless.

But back to my point. What in the hell is this guy talking about? Does anyone have a clue? And does the fact that the new SG of the UN is Korean, and ostensibly a nice person, somehow exempt all Koreans from committing crimes?

I'm not trying to get in the middle of the whole gun control argument. I think it's tacky to discuss this this early - kind of like the people who asked, when I told them my aunt had lung cancer, "Does she smoke?!"

As far as the issue goes, I know where I stand and why, and I'm so over having this debate, because nobody has the slightest intention of even listening to the opposition with an open mind any more. So why should I waste my breath trying to make my point?

Besides which, 2 guns did not wake up one fine morning and decide that they wanted to take down some college kids. That's absurd. And the kids weren't killed by a Korean. They were killed by a mentally disturbed person. That he was born in Korea is beside the point. That Ban-ki-Moon is Korean is beside the point. That he may have come up with a peace plan for Sudan is beside the point (and I'll believe that when I see it).

The guy was sick in the head. He killed them. That's the point. Period.

Last Night's "House" and Bad Advice

So last night's dual storyline was dumb on a couple of levels. First, the team was split up. House and Cuddy were flying back from a medical symposium in Asia (I kind of zoned out there, as I tend to do when Cuddy talks, but I think it was a WHO symposium on pandemics. OK, 1) Isn't the WHO (not the band, the World Health Organization) part of the UN? If so, then why wasn't the symposium in either New York or Brussels? 2) I get it - Bird Flu, Asia, pandemic conference. But since the furthest west the Bird Flu has come is Turkey (hahaha) again, WHY? You are going to have a symposium of the smartest medical minds in the world smack dab in the one part of the world where the pandemic hangs out? Are you challenging the disease to a smackdown? Do diseases enjoy irony?)

Anyway, I think it was just part of building up the "why House and Cuddy are on an airplane heading back from Asia" thing. Sometimes I over think these things instead of going with the flow.

The other storyline had to do with the remnants of the team: The Three Stooges and Wilson. Their patient is a 60ish woman (who I swear was Ellen Travolta) who collapses at her home. Now, the person who called it in was apparently a lesbian prostitute that Ellen had hired. As they are trying to figure out what is wrong with her, she confesses that she went to Caracas recently (a crisis having to do with turning the same age her mother was when she died) where she not only drank the water and ate salad, she got a tattoo, got drunk, snorted cocaine off a gay man's stomach and did the nasty with El Gordo. She explains that she never does stuff like this and it was stupid. Dr Wilson leaves, looking a little shell-shocked, and she says to the hooker, "It's my fault I'm sick, isn't it? I can't believe I was so stupid."

And the hooker says, "No, it's not your fault."

OK. First of all, if I were you, I wouldn't take advice about whether behaviors have consequences from a prostitute. She's not the best person to ask.

Second of all, it could be the reason. (Turns out it wasn't, but still.) You don't have to do stupid things constantly for 60 years in order for the consequences to bite you. Sure, sometimes you dodge the bullets. But other people are actually unlucky enough to get pregnant the first time, or get a disease. Or, like me, get mugged the one time they get gas after dark.

To my mind, the "don't feel bad because you're sick, even though you just acted like a drunken sailor. It's not your fault" concept is really irresponsible. Bad things do happen to good people. And bad people. And indifferent people. But your choices can make a difference.

All in all, last night's episode was a let down, especially after last week's really thoughtful episode.