DEE BATE

I watched the Bush/Kerry debate -- twice in fact, once as it happened, and again when I got back from Felix’s wine and poetry fest at the Knitting Factory. Thus I saw it one time sober and one time a little drunk, and laughed my ass off each time as Bush fumbled, stumbled, pouted, took on that now almost trademark deer-in-the-headlights expression, and repeatedly whined (nine times?) that it was hard work? Which seemed kinda rich coming from the man who has taken more vacations than any US president in history.
Yeah, if we have to score the thing like a prizefight, I figure Kerry smote Bush and the only real question is to whether it was a mighty smiting or just a regular smiting. The bout certainly seemed to define the choice for President is between a patrician college professor and an ankle-bitting Bluto.

JACK
But on to the more important stuff, because the inquiring Doc wants to know why Jack Daniels is reducing the alcohol content in Old #7 from 86 proof to a mere 80 proof?

GENE
Gene Vincent was a great lover of Jack Daniels, and, indeed, pretty much anything with an alcohol with, just possibly, the exception of anti-freeze, and if you want to read an except from my fabulous new book about him – http://www.thedonotpress.com/extracts/geneex.html

And on the subject of books and booze, a new book (not mine) on absinth is about to hit the stores (intelligence from fidicen) – http://www.wisc.edu/wisconsinpress/books/3747.htm

FUNDAMENTALIST FOLLIES
How many of you are up to speed on Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kansas). Brownback, even by my expansive standards, is verily weird. He lives rent free in a Christian commune in Washington with the rent paid by some obscure cult, and is the avowed foe of indecency, abortion, Howard Stern, and probably me, if he knew about me. Read an account of Brownback in Neanderthal on the subject of stem cell research. – http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,65144,00.html


RICHARD AVEDON RIP


CRYPTIQUE – The dog has met the frog. (This is one for the decoder ring.)

The secret word is Sluggo