Where's The Jot?
Talk to my grandfather.
Last night, he was all set on Isaiah's The World Today Just Nuts about Bill Frist. This morning he wakes up and says, "No, you have to go with his 'Celibacy In The City.'" Fine. I'm about to boot up the computer and he's wondering about Bully Boy in his blood box and I tell him I've highlighted that one a number of times so we can go with Celibacy In The City.
Then he says, "Wait, let me think."
So we go out to breakfast. He's set on another one and then as we're leaving, he says, "One of the Bully Is . . ." so I wait to be sure and even pull a Regis and ask, "Is that your final answer?"
He thinks about it and decides that it is because of the fact that when Mom was a little girl, she used to clip the Love Is . . . comic strips from the paper and she'd tape them to her bedroom mirror and on her bedroom door. (Which is news to me who couldn't even put up my sports posters with tacks!) (Serious, I had to use that ticky tacky stuff and it was only after I noticed my teacher using that to hang stuff on the walls at school that I got to put anything up on my bedroom walls.)
I like the Bully Is . . . comics too and it makes me grin to picture my mom as a kid clipping the Love Is . . . comics out of the paper and then taping them up. I started wondering what she based it on? Was it the saying or the drawing that would make her decide to clip one. So I call her at work and go, "Mom, how do you pick those out?"
She plays dumb and says she never did that and if she did, she doesn't remember it. As I'm about to get off the phone my grandfather asks me to ask her about when her cousin Phil ripped one off her bedroom door just to be mean and she punched him (she was nine) and Mom goes, real angry, "He deserved that!"
I was laughing and saying, "I thought you didn't remember!"
She remembered. All along. She said the boy and the girl were cute little drawings and that she did think ("then," she emphasized "then") that the comics were really wise.
So my grandfather and I are going with one of Isaiah's Bully Is . . . comics. And you can find four here because Ava pulled four of them together to make a mini-collection.
My grandfather picked this one because he says it sums up 2005, Bully Boy oblivious to everything around him. I'll put up Celibacy in the City next week. I'm not sure if I've done that before or not. The first time it went up, I wasn't even blogging. But it is funny and a favorite of mine too.
So what do we have left to note about 2005?
Yesterday we noted something Mom picked out (Kim Gandy's latest column) and, over my breakfast, my grandfather had the idea of 10 other people who made a difference in 2005. There are more than ten people but these are the ones we picked out.
1) Amy Goodman because Democracy Now! gives you real news and not spin.
2) Cindy Sheehan because she took a stand and forced America to face reality.
3) Peyton and Eli Manning because we're big sports fans (and I did hear on Democracy Now! this guy talking about how the brothers visited the evacuees).
4) Robert Parry because he writes real strong books and Rebecca pulled my name for Christmas out of the list so I have three of his books. (I've just finished Secrecy & Privilege.)
5) Danny Schechter who is the News Dissector and is also the director of a great documentary called WMD (and you can read a review at The Third Estate Sunday Review).
6, 7, 8) Jon Stewart, Margaret Cho and Janeane Garofalo because laughter is needed and makes us all feel better.
9) Dave Zirin because he writes about sports and politics and makes you realize how important both can be.
10) All of us who are speaking out or starting to and aren't suffering from a bad case of "War Got Your Tongue."
