Gone Too Soon: Michael LaFever (1974-2010)

Michael LaFever

"Regrets. I've had a few, but then again, too few to mention."

That was the line from "My Way," by Frank Sinatra. It's that line I have been thinking most about this week. If there is one real regret I got right now, it is that I didn’t take the time to get to know certain people I have crossed paths with throughout my life, especially with some of those from my previous IT helpdesk job that I left in August 2008.

The recent email I received from a former colleague through Facebook Monday night letting me know that a co-worker I knew named Michael LaFever passed away Feb. 21, 2010, brought up that lingering regret.

I spoke to Michael off and on at my previous IT job. It was, however, most always when I was on the phone troubleshooting hardware or software issues and needed an immediate answer in a quick attempt to get the caller off my phone.

Though I didn’t attempt to get to know him on a more personal level, I was able, seeing since my cubicle was right near his, to make a good enough assessment that Michael was a Hell of a nice guy.

He was always smiling and upbeat and never lost his patience with anyone no matter how moronic the idiot on the other end of the phone was.

I got to know Michael more this past year by connecting with him on Facebook. Actually, he connected with me sometime last year.

Michael was always posting things on Facebook. When he one day wrote on his page how his girlfriend said yes when he proposed to her, I was happy for him, if not a little jealous and envious because I have yet to find a significant other.

Perhaps in my case, that’s all my fault because I haven’t bothered to go looking and the times I have searched, I have found they were already attached to someone else. That’s what makes the Oscar nominated film, "Up in the Air" (2009), in particular, the ending when George Clooney’s Ryan Bingham learns the real truth about the woman he falls in love with all the more depressing, if you’ve seen it.

As I browsed through Michael’s Facebook page the past few days, which sadly now resembles a memorial guestbook people sign at wakes with comments of condolences from friends and family members, I took note of one comment Michael said on his page back in late December last year.

“If you ever get bored just go out in public and make small talk with a stranger. You just might get a kick out of it. I know I do sometimes. People are amazing!!”

I don’t believe for one minute Michael was lying. That’s just the type of person he was. He had that kind of friendly, easygoing personality who wasn’t afraid to talk to anyone, even if he just met them.

It’s that kind of magnetic personality that would have made Michael a perfect candidate if he planned on going into journalism.

It was by mere accident when I spoke with him briefly online through AOL’s instant messaging back in November 2009. We briefly argued politics, Obama, "Dubya," and catching each other up on our latest jobs. I was about to sign off AOL when Michael suddenly asked me for advice on how to get into writing and getting himself published. He said he had a knack for writing opinionated political type columns.

I thought to myself, all this time I thought he was going for a corporate career working for some company's Information Technologies department either doing troubleshooting or training. I even gave him the Dallas County Community College District's website to check for I.T. job postings which are listed every Friday.

I told him thanks to the Internet; anyone can write their own blog. If he was, however, looking to actually get himself published, then he’d have to go back to school, major in journalism, and write for the college newspaper.

Michael said he had been considering going to back to school. I told him about how I write brief film reviews and sometimes columns for the "Blitz Weekly," a local publication in the Dallas area and gave him the editor’s contact information. I told him they are always looking for stuff to publish and the possibility existed that if he has anything he’s written in regard to sports, food, entertainment, politics, or anything pertaining to “male only” issues, the editor might consider running them in a future issue.

Michael never contacted them.

A couple months later, I got an invite from him on Facebook letting me know he was having a get together on a Saturday, a few days after his 36th birthday Jan. 14 and invited all the former employees and managers. Unfortunately, the invite was too short notice for me to get the day off work. Like most everyone who knew him, especially those who knew him better than I did, the thought never crossed my mind that if I had gone, that that would have been the last time I had seen him.

Now that he is gone in what is a life unfinished, I am left wondering what kind of promising future Michael might have had if he had chosen writing.

What kinds of opinionated columns would he have published?

In his instant message to me back in November last year before signing off, Michael wrote if he gets let go from his current I.T. job, “Maybe I can take up writing... but I would just piss off everyone and have no readers by the time my 1st article was done…lol.”

©2/25/10

Edwards latest tell-all nothing more than tabloid trash

When former Democratic vice-presidential nominee John Edwards admitted to his having an affair three years ago with his campaign videographer Rielle Hunter, yet denying the child she had was his, I was disgusted at hearing the news as anyone else.

It is one thing to commit adultery. It’s another when the husband commits adultery at the time his wife is battling terminal cancer.

That’s all, however, between John Edwards and God. It’s not my place to point out what he did was morally reprehensible. We all have our flaws. Nor was I, despite my intense dislike for the Democratic Party, going to use Edwards’ downfall to do a little Mexican hat dance on his political tombstone.

That is no doubt something conservative talk show hosts do, and they have been joined in the past two weeks by another Andrew Young with the release of his new book, “The Politician”, which reportedly goes into far greater detail about the Edwards’ affair.

I have heard the hard right citing the usual double standard whenever a Democrat gets caught literally with his pants down, the drive-by media attempt to shovel the scandal under the rug. When a Republican, however, gets caught, the exact opposite happens. Their name and reputation get dragged through the mud and many times they are forced to resign.

This is nothing new.

What bothers me, with the release of Young’s book, is it’s not newsworthy. OK, it’s newsworthy from a trashy standpoint. That’s something the conservative talk show circuit has no problem discussing when a liberal Democrat’s infidelities take center stage.

Edwards’ admittance of the three-year-old affair is not getting to the point of being like the Tiger Woods scandal. If there was anything funny about it about it, David Letterman would have a Top 10 list of reasons why John Edwards cheated on his wife and Saturday Night Live would do a controversial weekend skit.

Like the Tiger Woods scandal, Edwards’ downfall has gotten worse if you believe the allegations written in Young’s book. You, who was Edwards’ former aide during the 2008 presidential campaign, said in an article in People, the reason he authored the book was “so the truth can be told.”

Among the allegations briefly covered in Us Weekly, Edwards supposedly made a sex tape between he and Hunter in 2007. The tape is reportedly in Young’s safety deposit box should it be needed to corroborate his story in future investigations.

There is the story that Hunter told Young how she spent the night at the Edwards’ home while Elizabeth was out promoting her book back in 2006.

“The next morning, Hunter “slept while the senator made breakfast for the kids and then drove to school,” Young was quoted as saying in Us Weekly. That same year, Edwards told his wife that Hunter was a “one-night stand.” Of course, everyone now knows otherwise.

In 2007, when Edwards learned of Hunter’s pregnancy, he asked Young to persuade her to get an abortion, which the author refused.

When Hunter went into labor Feb. 26, 2008, she asked Young to call Edwards, who in turn refused to speak to her. A month later Edwards asked Young to get one of the baby’s dirty diapers so a DNA test could be done to prove whether or not he was the father. Edwards also wanted a fabricated DNA test in case it turned out he was the father.

“I was the guy to put out the fires,” Young said in People of his days working for Edwards’ campaign. “The guy he counted on.”

Elizabeth Edwards, on the other hand, was no angel either according to the Us Weekly article. She reportedly saw cancer diagnosis as a means to boost Edwards’ poll numbers, encouraging him to seek the presidency. This, despite the fact she knew of the affair and chances of the scandal sinking the entire campaign.

New comes the torrid news, from the National Enquirer, that Edwards beat his wife during a marital spat.

There are only two things that are true now. Edwards finally admitted on Jan. 21 that he is the father of 23-month-old Frances Quinn Hunter. “It was wrong for me…to deny she was my daughter,” Edwards said.

The other is that Edwards’ 32-year marriage is now over, with Elizabeth calling it quits.

“She (Elizabeth) said I’ve had it. I can’t do this. I want my life back,” said Elizabeth’s sister Nancy Anania in People. “A long marriage is a tough habit to break, and you throw in incurable cancer and young children, it makes you waiver. But I heard peace in her voice that I haven’t heard in a long time.”

I have seen "The Politician" displayed at bookstores, and I do not intend to waste money on it. I also have no intention of even browsing through it out of sheer curiosity.

Young’s book is tabloid trash. I equate with the that of The Starr Report: The Findings of Independent Counsel Kenneth W. Starr on President Clinton and the Lewinsky Affair” published back in 1998.

Edwards’ scandal may not be equal to the sperm-stained blue dress that almost sunk a presidency. However, all the tawdry little tidbits we’ve heard about since then are enough to make sleazy comparisons to that huge piece of evidence that plagued President Clinton.

©2/16/10

Common courtesy, decency becoming extinct

Whatever happened to having respect for one another or showing courtesy to others?

I guess I am a complete fool for holding a door open for someone, especially women, when I am at the store. I was always taught to be especially polite towards women, in that respect.

By the same token, if I had a girlfriend and she was sitting on the passenger side of the car, I wouldn’t expect her to open the door herself to get out. I’d rather she wait for me to open the door. In fact, I’d probably get upset if she got out of the car on her own. As we are going out of a restaurant headed to the car, I’d like to be the one to unlock and open the passenger door for her before I get in myself.

Today, however, we ignore these courtesies. We’re just a bunch of self-centered Americans. I find it rather ironic back when I took French class in high school how my teacher told us that the French were rude. Now I am not so sure that’s true. I am beginning to wonder if maybe the reason why other countries hate America is not so much the way our government dictates foreign policy as it is because most of us really are a bunch of assholes.

Anyone who drives see how rude people are. The speed limit on I-635 says 60 mph.

I go 75 mph or more and yet I am amazed at how many cars pass me. They sit there on my tail in their big pickup trucks, like they are waiting for me to move out of their way.

And you know what? I don’t get out of their way. I make them go around. I am not in a hurry to get where I am going, especially if it’s work, so I am going to take my time. Then there are those who don’t use their turn signals. They just weave in and out of lanes. I love it, especially when you try to get on the interstate and the people in the lane don’t move over. They just go faster in hopes they don’t let you in.

Back when I was growing up in Brookfield and La Grange Park, Illinois in grade school, I lived on a street where my sister, my parents and I made friends with other kids on the block and their parents. In a way, as sexist and silly as I find ABC’s “Desperate Housewives,” the one thing that show has gotten right is how they as neighbors always look out for one another.

If I stepped out of line at another friend’s house, that person’s parents would tell me to get out of their house. The same went f they stepped out of line at our house. And God help you if upon going home, your parents found out later from that other person’s parents why you were sent home. Not only would you be yelled at by the friend’s parents, but you’d get scolded by your own.

That doesn’t happen today. If a parent were to scold someone else’s kids for stepping out of line in their home, that kid’s parents would be at the person’s door looking for a fight. Or the kid could get a gun and shoot that person’s parents dead.

People don’t even have respect for showing up on Sunday at God’s house. Most of the ones I have seen who attend church services show up in trashy clothes. Would they ever show up at a job interview looking like trash, at funeral, or a wedding? I was taught to wear dress slacks, a dress shirt and dress shoes. I remember when I was an altar boy – again, God help you if the nun in charge of the altar boys found wearing gym shoes when serving mass.

What do I see today t mass? Kids wearing gym shoes serving mass. I remember one time how the priest go upset and yelled at the congregation about showing up late to mass.

Today, they can’t scold the congregation out of fear they’ll lose parishioners, and they lose them, they lose money. No money means no church.

It’s not funny when we look at how Americans continue to show disrespect towards others in real life.

In fact, it’s not funny at all.

©1/26/10

My Worst Films of 2009

Before 2009 is out, I will have seen 80 films or more at the theater. I'd be lying if I said every movie I saw was worth the money spent each time on the price of a ticket and concessions. If there is any consolation in knowing that I wasted up to $400 to watch lousy movies, it's that I get to do an article like this - bashing them at the end of the year. The following are what I deem the worst films of 2009, which fell into four categories.

One Note Performance Movies

I define the term, "one-note performance movie" as 1) the type of film, which is all about the actor/actress in the leading role. Nothing else matters, be it the plot, the screenplay, or any of the other supporting characters. I also define it as 2) a movie so bad the actor/actress knows it, yet they make the best of their leading role by giving a stand-out performance. This year, the top acting honors, in the worst movies, went to Dakota Fanning, Sienna Miller, Seth Rogen and Hillary Swank.

“Amelia”: Oscar winner Hillary Swank is no doubt a dead ringer for real life aviatrix Amelia Earhart in terms of appearance. Screenwriters Ron Bass and Anna Hamilton Phelan, who base their script on the biographical books, “East to the Dawn” and “The Sound of Wings”, along with director Mira Nair know the notes. They captured Earhart's private life with publicist George Putnam (Richard Gere) and her brief affair with TWA founder Gene Vidal (Ewan McGregor). In between these dramatic moments is the black-and-white newsreel footage showing the real Earhart's successes and sometimes failures as well as her publicity stunts promoting various products inspiring women everywhere. The filmmakers just don't know how to put any of this into music. Swank's character is so emotionally distant, it's like spending almost 40 years with someone you've fallen in love with and by the time they have unexpectedly passed on, you are unable to shed any tears because you haven't really gotten to "know" them.



“G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra”: The two words that best describe G.I. Joe is "no imagination." I am not even going to address the plot except to say the characters here are as soulless as the plastic ¾-inch and 12- inch Hasbro action figures you see littering the store shelves of Toys R' Us. The only saving grace is Sienna Miller's leather-clad Baroness villain who chews up the scenery, firing machine guns in both hands, struts around in leather boots or expensive black pumps, engages in catfights with a female redhead "Joe" named Scarlett O'Hara (Rachel Nichols), and utters lines like "Nice shoes," as she throws a woman out of an elevator at a Paris mall. She'd make a great James Bond villainess should she ever want to venture into other action-adventure roles. I wonder how Miller would react if I told her I didn't agree with her comment, "G.I. Joe is not going to be the best acting work I've ever done."

“Observe & Report”: Midway through Observe & Report is a scene where anti-hero Ronnie Barnhart (Seth Rogen), a mall security guard with dreams of joining the police force. He is set up by a detective into thinking he passed the police exam when in fact, he failed. The joke backfires when another detective hiding in the closet walks out saying, "I thought this was going to be funny, but this is just sad." Therein explains the mood of the entire film. “Observe & Report” is a humorless, racist, raunchy dark side of “Paul Blart: Mall Cop,” the hit box office comedy earlier this year that starred Kevin James as a lovable, overweight mall security officer who takes on terrorists. By comparison, Rogen's Ronnie Barnhart is anything but lovable. There is nothing funny about a loser who suffers from bipolar disorder and lives with his alcoholic mother who makes it his mission in life to track down a male flasher who's been running around the local mall showing off his private parts. In fact, there is nothing funny about mental illness.

“Push”: The advertisement makes one think this might be a fun rendition of NBC's “Heroes” about people born with exceptional powers wanted by rogue government agents. “Push” is anything but fun, though it is laughable. The heroes, led by Chris Evans and Dakota Fanning, might as well be called Jedi Knights from the Star Wars prequels since they can perform telekinesis and predict future events. Fanning, now 15, who has been in a number of popular television shows and box office hits like “War of the Worlds” (2005), provides a show-stopping performance of her own, getting laughably drunk on Sake and drawing pictures of dead people. I wonder if she is the long-lost sister of the character Haley Joel Osment played in “The Sixth Sense” (1999) who often said he saw dead people.

Out of This World Premises

“Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant”: Don't be fooled by the talented cast of Freak Circus characters that include Willem Dafoe as a decades old vampire, Salma Hayek as a Bearded Lady, Ken Watanabe as the circus conductor, Mr. Tall, who boasts an incredibly large forehead, and John C Reilly as Vampire Larten Crepsley. I didn't care one bit about the story in which a young kid (Chris Massoglia) chosen to be Crepsley's "Vampire's Assistant" gets into a war between the circus freaks and another group of vampires called "Vampanzees." The only saving grace here is the film's dark, macabre production design. Otherwise, this might just be the first vampire movie where I wished a coffin was around so that I could crash for an hour and a half after losing interest. When it comes to trying to hold my attention, “Cirque Du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant” sucks the life blood out of you.

“The Fourth Kind”: Milla Jovovich branches out from her Resident Evil movies playing Dr. Abbey Tyler, a psychiatrist who interviews patients who may have experienced being abducted by aliens while sleeping. The trouble is director and screenwriter Olatunde Osunsanmi know nothing about how to tie facts into fiction and make it into a compelling thriller. Instead, he combines actual interviews with the "real" Dr. Abbey Tyler and her patients with reenactments featuring the cast. The sequences don't work and what's especially insulting is the way each cast member is introduced in the reenactments that say "Will Patton - actor" playing Sheriff August and "Elias Koteas - actor" playing psychiatrist Abel Campos. It's as if Osunsanmi thinks the audience is so stupid that he feels he needs to tell us when a reenactment is happening. Like we can't figure that out for ourselves. The bottom line is that the film is a complete fake and raises three times more questions than it answers. The Fourth Kind offers no solid proof that there even was a Dr. Abbey Tyler to begin with, much less an incident where her blind daughter was abducted by aliens.

“Where the Wild Things Are”: I get skeptical when every film critic in America embraces a children's movie like this and I can find absolutely no one out there in the entertainment media who dislikes it (remember how much they loved “The English Patient” - 1996). I think the only reason critics loved this movie is not so much as it is their love for its director, Spike Jonze, whose previous movies “Being John Malkovich” (1999) and “Adaptation” (2002) received Oscar nominations. Just because “Where the Wild Things Are” is based on Maurice Sendak's nine-page children's story about a bratty little kid named Max who conjures up a fantasy world of his own where he is king doesn't mean it's for kids, much less adults. I have read how some young ones below age 10 feared the creatures and I can't say I blame them. From a kid's perspective, the creatures in Where the Wild Things Are really do look scary. From an adult point of view, I found them all incredibly ugly, annoying and repulsive. Seeing these furry characters, I could not help but be reminded of Sid and Marty Kroft kid's show from the late 1960s called "The Banana Splits," which featured a group of adults dressed up as ugly-looking adult dogs named Fleegle, Bingo, Drooper. and Snork.

Sequels That Wore Out the Franchise's Welcome

“Halloween II”: Michael Myers, the masked indestructible, inhuman, towering serial murderer of director Rob Zombie's unnecessary remake of John Carpenter's “Halloween” (1978) continued his bloody mayhem in this sequel to Zombie's 2007 follow-up. Like the 2007 predecessor, “Halloween II” is not scary, suspenseful, or fun. The film is instead a disturbing, tragic take on what happens all too often in real life murder cases. An echo on the life of twisted serial murderers and a tabloid take on how authors make money writing best-selling crime books about the subject without any thought for the victims.



“Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen”: I will not be surprised if “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” goes down as the number one worst reviewed film of 2009. The film deserves the honor so much that I actually hope it gets nominated for several Golden Raspberry Awards at next year's Razzies and wins. This sequel to the 2007 summer blockbuster wasn't made for movie critics. The picture was made for dumb, slow-witted audiences who have no sense of adventure and imagination, and for kids whose idea of adventure is to watch a lot of things blowing up. Whereas the original was kid friendly, which I considered a good thing, Revenge of the Fallen is just annoyingly loud, vulgar, and filled with sexual innuendoes that are not funny.

The I Want to Put A Bullet Through My Head Award Goes To:

“The Informers”: Now I understand what a friend of mine meant when after sitting through “Leaving Las Vegas” (1995) that starred Nicholas Gage as a suicidal loser who drinks himself to death, he felt like putting a bullet through his head. Based on Brett Easton Ellis' book about the early 80s sex and drug culture, which was also chronicled in his books, “Less Than Zero”, and “Bright Lights, Big City”, both of which became movies in 1987 and 1988, The Informers is a depressing, sleazy exploration into the drug addicted, rich, sordid, unhappy lives of several Los Angeles residents. Kim Basinger, Mickey Rourke, Winona Ryder, and Billy Bob Thornton have supporting roles. When the spoiled young rich kids are not busy engaging in threesomes, sometimes with the same sex, they're doing drugs, talking about some strange disease affecting the gay underworld before the illness was called AIDS, and asking themselves why their friends have begun noticing strange cancerous scabs on their skin. If this isn't the immoral abyss of Hell, it's got to be Purgatory.

Two-star movies that weren't the worst but were forgettable nonetheless: “Confessions of a Shopaholic”, “Friday the 13th”, “Ghosts of Girlfriends Past”, “The Haunting in Connecticut”, “Jennifer's Body”, “Knowing”, “Obsessed”, “The Taking of Pelham 123”, “Terminator: Salvation.”

Close But No Cigar: Two-and-a -half star movies that almost won me over but still failed: “Fanboys”, “Fast & Furious”, “Public Enemies”, “The Hurt Locker”, “The Informant”, “Law-Abiding Citizen”, “Race to Witch Mountain”, “The Twilight Saga: New Moon.”

©12/31/09

Not yet ready to endorse Sarah Palin for president in 2012

The mass media hype over the release of Sarah Palin's book last month sent chills up my spine. I can't exactly say they were 100 percent positive feelings.

Watching an ABC News story reported by Kate Snow, seeing fans waiting in line outside a bookstore in Grand Rapids, Michigan to meet Palin, who was there to sign copies of her new biography, "Going Rogue: An American Life," reminded me of the mass-marketed hysteria last January when Barack Obama was sworn in as president.

The same mass media/mass marketed hype that surrounded Obama that is now focused on Sarah Palin worries me. Palin, a former Alaskan governor, rose to prominence as John McCain's vice-presidential running mate. She doesn't know if a 2012 run for the presidency is in the cards for her.

"That certainly isn't on my radar screen right now," Palin told Barbara Walters in a Nightline interview. "[But] when you consider some of the ordinary turning into extraordinary events that have happened in my life, I am not one to predict what will happen in a few years."

"My ambition if you will, my desire, is to help our country in whatever role that may be, and I cannot predict what that will be, what doors would be open in the year 2012," she said. "If people will have me, I will."

Apparently, the people waiting at that mall in Grand Rapids have already made up their minds. Some had buttons that say, "Palin 2012." "Sarah! Sarah! Sarah!" was the chant yelled by some as they waited in line.

"She is very down to earth," said one woman waiting in line. "She can handle all the politics, all the media, all the press, and still be able to raise her family of five kids. Awesome. Strong woman."

"If the news media leaves her alone, she can win," said another woman when asked if Palin could be the next president of the United States.

I am not about to jump on the Palin bandwagon just yet. All Americans did, when they voted for Obama, was moronically judge a book by its cover and toss aside all the questionable issues. They thought of him as a new African American version of JFK with socialist stances.

Some people voted for him because he has a great personality, a beautiful wife and two wonderful children. Obama is, however, definitely no JFK. By comparison, Palin is no Ronald Reagan. I am beginning to think the only reason people want Palin for president is simply because she is a woman and they think it's time for a woman to run the White House.

I am all for an African American or a female president running the country. So long as they are the right person for the job, and they aren't voted in on the sole basis of their good looks.

Granted, I have no love for CBS' Katie Couric, whom I don't consider a real journalist but, instead, see her as an attractive talking head. The fact is Palin screwed up the Couric interview late last year when she was asked what newspapers and magazines she reads regularly and failed to give a straight answer.

"It wasn't my best interview," she said.

All right. At least Palin admits she messed up.

But what about her sudden decision to leave office as Alaskan governor last summer saying it was in the best interest of the state?

"I was heading into a lame duck session, that final year in office, and most normal politicians, what they do, knowing that they're not going to run again, they're in that lame duck ... that, that situation, they milk it. They collect the paycheck. My administration was inundated and paralyzed by those who were filing these frivolous lawsuits, and, and, um, ethics violation charges. And it was unfair to Alaskans. So, I knew that what we were doing was right," Palin said.

So here are my questions for Palin: Let's assume you are elected president of the United States in 2012 and upon your fourth year in office in 2016, you decide not to run a second term. Am I to assume you might do what you did in Alaska - decide to call it quits and let your vice president take over? Can you take the huge media scrutiny you are going to get if you decide to run in 2012?

The media coverage Palin would draw in 2012 would be nothing like what she got when she was chosen as McCain's running mate.

Don't misunderstand me. Palin is close to winning me over. I like a lot of the stuff she has said so far, especially when it comes to her criticism of Obama's track record in office so far. If the Obama administration isn't scared of her, why then do they keep spouting off negative comments about her?

I have no love, for example, for any of Palin's critics. I think the only reason McCain staffers are speaking out against her is more out of jealousy that she actually helped boost voter turnout for McCain.

Some of her critics are getting their comeuppance. I never liked David Letterman and that was before the late-night talk show host made tasteless remarks earlier this year about Palin's daughter. For years, I could never pin down why I never liked Letterman. Then the talk show host's sex scandal broke out and I finally got my answer.

As for Bristol Palin's ex-boyfriend and father Levi Johnson's claims against the former governor that she called their son, Trigg, who has Down Syndrome, "retarded," I am not going to listen to someone who reduces himself to doing nude spreads in Playgirl magazine for money.

Then there is that recent eye-opening picture on the cover of Newsweek showing Palin in a sexy shot that was already used in The Runner's World magazine. Don't tell me that ploy wasn't used to get people to buy their magazine. Kudos to the Newsweek staff. Thanks to that photo, I am not renewing my subscription and have high hopes their lousy revamped publication that now consists of essays meets a quick, well-deserved death.

You hear that, Newsweek?

As much as I would like 2012 to get here quicker so we conservative and independent Americans can choose a better leader than the one we have now, three years is still a long time.

For now, I'll stick to what one woman said as she waited in line to meet Palin at the book signing.

"I am not sure she is qualified to be president quite yet, but she is a heck of a lot more qualified than Barack Obama."

©12/8/09

My search for the perfect burger

I have eaten many hamburgers in my lifetime – some grilled, others mostly grease burgers. Unfortunately, I have yet to encounter the thrill of eating a one-of-a-kind hamburger that is nothing like you get at your local fast-food restaurants.

I have literally begun boycotting places such as Wendy’s and McDonald’s, which no doubt makes my doctor and the weight loss experts at Medifast happy. Other than the obvious reason that they aren’t ideal for one’s health, the other reason why I’ve stopped eating them is because I am sick and tired of all those commercials that show a nice juicy hamburger with steam rising from it. That is a far cry from the one you actually receive, the one that comes with dried meat that looks like it sat there for hours.

Why else did D-Fens, the gun-toting unemployed defense contractor Michael Douglas played in “Falling Down” (1993), pull out an AK-47 upon receiving that dried up flat piece of meat in between two cold buns at the local Whammyburger? It’s because of the deceiving mouth-watering advertisement.

“Can anyone tell me what’s wrong with this picture?” D-Fens asks the patrons comparing his burger to the ad,

When I order a hamburger, I want it to be something I can’t get every day, like when I go to Chicago every few years to see friends and family. I go there to eat what I can’t get here in Texas: Italian beef sandwiches; stuffed pizza from Giordano’s or any for place for that matter that is not Pizza Hut, Dominos, CiCi’s or Papa Johns and “real” Italian pastry.

My search for a one-of-a-kind hamburger has been in vain. I have tried watching those specials on the Travel Channel profiling the nation’s top burger joints. The same went for that Texas Monthly article in their August 2009 issue profiling the 50 greatest hamburgers in the Lone Star State.

Seeing those hefty guys late at night stuffing their faces and saying, “You don’t want to eat this every day,” does me no good when I am on a Medifast diet of powdered drinks, eggs, puddings, bars, eight glasses of water and am only allowed one meat and veggie meal a day.

I could not get past the magazine’s front cover without wanting to order a Big Mouth Burger from Chili’s.

My repeated emails and phone calls to Audrina Partridge, Padma Lakshmi and Paris Hilton asking their opinions about those charbroiled burgers they have advertised for Carl’s Jr over the have gone unanswered.

All I want to know s if they think the burgers are any good. I am story, a but a sexy commercial ad and a quote from a customer in an article on the company’s website who, after eating their $14 Prime Rib - $6 burger says, “It’s like an orgasm” is not enough to convince me.

I hate to think the only one-of-a-kind burger to check out is The Heart Attack Grill, located in Chandler, Arizona, which I first heard about on Paul Harvey a few years ago.

It’s here, according to their website, www.heartattackgrill.com, where patrons called “patients” can chomp down on “All-You-Can-Eat Flatliner Fries” that are cooked in pure lard. They have the choice of burgers ranging from one to four patties and are cooked with a half-pound to two pounds of beef packed with cheese (don’t forget the lard), all of which are named after heart operations.

The Quadruple Bypass Burger is reportedly 8,000 calories. To help wash all this down, one can drink a full sugar Jolt Cola. It looks like such heart and diabetes medications at Crestor, Coreg, Januvia and Metformin will be no match for this intake of saturated fats that by the time you are done has got to be around 20,000 calories plus.

As an added bonus, those who are over 350 pounds and overeat for free. Should one live through finishing off The Quadruple Bypass Burger, he (or she) would be escorted out to their car in a wheelchair by a sexy nurse of his (her) choosing who would put the Hooters’ girls to shame. These young ladies are dressed in over-the-knee skirts, stockings, and feels. You don’t get this kind of service at Hooters.

I’ll visit The Heart Attack Grill one of these days. When I am suicidal, that is.

My search for the one-of-a-kind burger almost ended last December when one of my coworkers ordered lunch from a local joint called Burger Island. I figured there is a place that probably serves a hamburger you don’t normally eat every day and although they have a handful of restaurants in the Dallas area, they are not the corporate equivalent of McDonald’s or Whataburger. Up until recently, they didn’t even have a website.

Sure, I could have ordered their Big Island Burger which comes with sauteed onions, jalapenos, American and provolone cheese, mayo, mustard, lettuce, tomatoes and pickles or the Double Joint Burger, which comes with the same condiments, but the double meat is one pound. I wasn’t in the mood to be adventurous, nor was I in the mood for leftovers.

So, I just ordered their simple $4.20 hamburger. When the food arrived, my heart sank. The burger looked like your average Whataburger. Then I took a bite and the meat tasted different. It had a tangy taste that reminded me of those Italian beef sandwiches in Chicago.

I thought to myself I finally found the perfect hamburger where the secret to how it tastes lies in the meat cooked!

If only my joy had lasted longer. When I returned to Burger Island a few weeks later to order the same thing, gone was that tangy taste I encountered the first time. The hamburger was the same as one gets anywhere else. It was just a plain old grease burger.

And so, my search for the one-of-a-kind hamburger continues.

©11/24/09