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Liberal Larry's Christmas Survival Tips

Four shopping days left until the Winter Solstice, and despite our best efforts to suck every last ounce of joy out of the holiday season there are still some Christians out there who insist on turning Christmas into one big religious hoorah. It’s therefore incumbent upon us as progressives to take whatever steps necessary to not only protect the sacred Wall Between Church and State from such proselytizing fanatics, but our impressionable children from the soft bigotry of Christian imagery.

So before I crawl under the sink for the remainder of the holiday, I’d like to leave you with a few quick tips that will help defend you and yours against the cultural disease known as Christmas.

• When distributing free condoms and gay pride literature outside your local elementary school, educate the little tots abot how the bourgeois concept of “Santa Claus” is merely a construct of the global capitalist plutocracy to exploit the primitive social-psychological consumptive impulses of the sheeplike masses. Oh, and the Easter Bunny killed their mommy.

• You’ll be the life of the holiday party while making a powerful political statement if you whack yourself in the knee with a ballpein hammer and scream like a girl whenever someone mentions “Christmas”.

• Insenstive holiday yard displays are infuriating at best, but their sting is lessened if all cultures are equally represented. As an acknowledgment that we live in a big, multicultural village, demand your neighbors place the severed head of an infidel next to their plastic nativity scenes.

• Progressives have made great strides in silencing the infamous Salvation Army bell ringers, but they still smile and offer you warm wishes for the holiday season. Contact your local chapter of the ACLU to see what can be done to stop them. Nothing cures a case of yuletide cheer like a well-crafted harassment lawsuit.

• For many Americans, Christmas is a time to reunite with family members and loved ones. But for others, it’s just another reminder of their lonely, fruitless existence. That’s not really a tip. It’s just something I needed to get off my chest.

• Four words: Boogers in the Eggnog.

• Christmas isn’t only about Baby Jesus. Refuse to reward carolers with any tofu or soymilk until they honor MARKAZHI POOJ with a recital of the Thiruvembavai . Offer to provide the traditional brightly painted squirrels.

• Inflatable Frosty ain’t so tuff. Show him who’s boss!

Ciao!

Mel Gibson No Longer Welcome at Camp Casey

According to a memo I just received from Mother Cindy Sheehan, actor/director Mel Gibson is no longer welcome at Camp Casey or any Code Pink/Gold Star Family hootenannies. Gibson, who recently denounced the Bush junta as a bunch of fear-mongering Mayans, and just last weekend went on a drunken, anti-Semitic tirade, is suspected of being a devout Catholic.

Yes, Gibson’s primitive religious beliefs are common knowledge to anyone who doesn’t live in a tent - but it came as a complete shock to Mother Cindy, who can barely watch the TV news through her endless tears of grief. While she is grateful for his offer to speak at next month’s “Down with the Bush Neocon/PNAC Zionist Aggressor Agenda” clambake, she fears that it would damage the credibility of the peace movement to be associated with a follower of the second most evil and genocidal religion in the history of the world. She has therefore regretfully declined Gibson’s offer. Until such a time that he redeems himself by championing the cause of a convicted cop killer or fellating Hugo Chavez, Mother Cindy will also give Gibson's Camp Casey VIP Celebrity Suck Up Pass to someone who more accurately reflects the views of the organization. That’s bad news for Mad Max fans, but good news for fans of actor Gary Busey, who will dazzle the crowd above and beyond their peyote colonics by rambling incoherently for 20 minutes and repeatedly whacking himself in the face with a frying pan.

Mother Cindy assures me that Casey would approve.

Oh What a Night!

Saturday marked the 30-ish year since my teenaged mother was forced by her right-wing fascist parents to carry her unwanted pregnancy to term. What better way to forget my shame for being born than to enjoy a night of good food and good music with some good company?

So after a nice vegetarian dinner at Applebee’s, Myranda and I went over to the Stillakoomish Riverboat Bingo Palace for the much-anticipated Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons concert. It was only six o’clock when we arrived at the venue, but the place was already SRO with geriatric, blue-haired groupies trying to relive their glory days. From wall to wall, the dance floor was a polychromatic sea of open-seated sweat pants, polyester leisure suits, and faded poodle skirts hiked up to reveal pasty white thighs covered with roadmaps of varicose veins.

“Woo Nellie!” I bubbled, rubbing my hands together with anticipation. “We’re in for one wild show! Ol’ Frankie V. never disappoints!”

“Aren’t these guys a little old?” Myranda asked. “I mean, my gramma listens to their music.”

“Music?" I replied with a snort of derision. “Who cares about the music? It’s all about the message, baby! If you want candy-ass, bubblegum pop tunes, go to a Neil Young show. People come to see Frankie V. for his biting political commentary and knock-your-socks off stage act!”

“I think I just got felt up by Larry Linville,” she said dryly.

I brushed aside her negativity and lead her to our seats. “Just relax. Sit down. Ignore the old people smell and fasten your seatbelt, Dorothy, because you aren’t in Kansas anymore and this ain’t your father’s Oldsmobile!”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” she said.

But before I could explain, The Jersey Boy himself took the stage to a standing ovation. A ray of pink light glanced off his sequined tuxedo and shot straight into my eyes, and for a moment I existed on several planes of both space and time simultaneously. Frankie’s trademark falsetto rang out the familiar words from Dawn, a Sting-esque ballad railing against Bush’s reckless environmental policies that snapped me out of my euphoric trance. Next came Rag Doll, a touching tribute to all the innocent children murdered in Bush’s illegal and immoral war for oil, followed by Sherry, an obvious jab at Bush’s drinking problem. They finished the set with an up-tempo version of Can’t Take My Eyes Off You that brought that house down.

I glanced over to catch Myranda suppressing a yawn.

“Don’t you GET it?” I snapped at her. “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You? He’s talking about Bush’s domestic spying program!”

She shrugged. “Can we go now?”

Not a chance, toots. I stood in line for nine hours buy these tickets before realizing I was actually at a Marlo Thomas book signing. Nobody, not even an androgynous, hatchet-faced wannabeatnik with a goofy beret and lensless glasses was going to ruin my special day. But before I could tell her to go catch herself a cab, a hush swept across the crowd as Frankie called for the stage lights to be dimmed.

“I’d like to dedicate the next one to the peeResident SElect and Commander in Thief,” he announced, his dentures punctuating each word with a profound clack, like a judge's gavel pronouncing Bush guilty as charged for all his crimes against humanity.

Suddenly, the stage erupted in an explosion of smoke, and a giant image of Bush’s face with a little Hitler mustache materialized overhead, seemingly floating above the astonished crowd as the familiar opening chords of Walk Like a Man blasted out the speakers.

Myranda sprang from her seat with excitement. “OmiGoddess! It’s so true! Bush IS Hitler! Why didn’t I think of that?”

The crowd erupted with wild applause as Frankie donned a rubber Bush mask and performed simulated oral sex on a crucifix while riding a donkey draped with the American flag. Behind him, a procession of shaved monkeys wearing Pope hats threw feces-smeared Bibles and used prophylactics at the audience while all four of the Seasons ignited their farts to the tune of the National Anthem.

And after all these years, it was good to see that age hasn’t dulled Frankie’s edge one iota. Way past their music prime, many artists feel the need to perform increasingly obscene acts on stage in order to maintain their fan base. Others slam the peeResident just to sell records. Not ol' Frankie V. he's still the same rock n' roll rebel he was late December back in '63. In these American Dark Ages of fascist oppression and squashed dissent, Valli is a modern day Paul Revere, riding roughshod through the streets of conformity, unafraid to yank our collective doodle dandy to make his point.

After the concert, Myranda and I stood in the parking lot, soaking in the afterglow.

“Oh Larry, you were so right!” she breathlessly confessed. “Everything he said is exactly what I as a progressive have known deep down for years, but have never had the musical talent nor the flatulence to properly express! I haven’t seen anything so politically relevant since Bob Goulet sodomized Bush in effigy at the Evergreen State Fair. Frankie Valli is a God amongst mere mortals! Thank you, Larry! And Happy I-Ruined-A-Womyn’s-Life Day!”

Viva La Raza!

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, waves of Italian and Irish immigrants came to the New World, chasing the American dream of freedom and prosperity. But instead of streets paved with gold, they found only hatred and prejudice. Forced to work in our factories, fight in our wars, and speak our language, their rich customs and traditions were absorbed into American culture. In time, they learned to accept their enslavement and became citizens of the very same system that oppressed them. One of my students, a third generation Irish-American, actually speaks fluent English.

Latino immigrants, however, have El Fuego in their blood! They won’t meekly succumb to assimilation like the Europeans did, and have managed thus far to preserve their language and culture. Often, I will see their beautifully decorated lowriders cruising through Tacoma’s hilltop neighborhood, perhaps on their way to purchase bargain Wal-Mart electronics just as their ancient Aztecan ancestors once did. Their deep connection to their Latin heritage is also evident in the impromptu 2am Mariachi contests held in the hallway outside my door, and the bottomless pile of old mattresses and empty cans of menudo by the dumpster are a testament to their deep sense of family and tradition.

Now, the Shrub wants to take that all away from them. By forcing them to become citizens, get social security numbers, pay taxes and “live on the books”, so to speak, Bush will not only destroy what makes undocumented workers so special and unique, but make them susceptible to attacks from evil time-traveling cyborgs as well. Has Bush’s bigotry completely blinded him to the fact that we need these people to pick our fruit and clean our toilets?

Hopefully, their righteous anger over being forced to become American citizens will give undocumented workers the incentive to vote Democrat in November. If not, I fear what they may become.

Whiny Kids Become Conservatives, Study Reveals

A recent study at my ol' Alma Mater has concluded that when whiny kids grow up, they become conservatives. When they don’t, they become liberals. Like Nazi mosquitoes to a right-wing bug zapper, weak-minded, insecure children find themselves attracted to the rigid structure that an oppressive world of moral absolutes, strict gender roles, and strong family values can provide. Kids who don’t give a rat’s ass about any of those things naturally gravitate towards the more enlightened left side of the political spectrum.

This comes as no surprise to those of us who have had to put up with bellyaching conservatives for years now. Just the other day, a bunch of us at Seattle Hemp Products were discussing how miserable our lives had become since Bush stole the election and started forcing brain dead Florida lesbian couples to collect cans off the side of the road to pay for their botched back alley abortions, and how that bastard Larry O'Farrell in Accounting kills an AIDS infected baby fur seal every time he gasses up his brand new Chevy Blazer. Suddenly, Alan Murvine in Accounts Receivable popped his red, puffy face out of his cubicle and rudely demanded we quit our “pathetic sniveling” and shut our “greasy, liberal cakeholes”.

Well, I assure you I had no idea that there was a right-wing sissy boy in our midst, and when I informed the vice president of how distraught we all were by Murvine’s insensitive remarks, the intolerant neo-con was summarily dismissed.

Now if we could only do something about the smokers in Shipping.

Is America Out of Touch with Hollywood?

Although it's been an incredibly busy week for me, with nary a free minute to even update my blog, I at least made an effort to sit down and watch the Oscars last Sunday night. That’s more than I can say for the rest of America, though. The ratings for this year’s Academy Award ceremonies were the lowest in recorded history, second only to the pilot episode of the Discovery Channel’s Magical Journey Through Phil Donahue’s Digestive Tract. Donahue, of course, insists that the series was sabotaged by right-wing network execs at the behest of the Bush administration. Perhaps so. But with box office numbers continuing to tank as well, one can’t help but wonder if America has somehow lost touch with Hollywood, and how future generations will ever find their way without talented actors and actresses to guide them.

There was a time when the American film industry was little more than an instrument for spewing jingoist propaganda. Fascists like John Wayne and Henry Fonda poisoned millions of young minds with their pro-American cowboy filth. But since the 1960’s, Hollywood has become our moral compass. More than just performing monkeys, actors have become the better angels of our nature, leading us along the path of social progress in ways that people with less perfect hair never could. Schindler’s List taught us about the horrors of death camps years before Abu Ghraib and Gitmo. Eddie Murphy’s wonderful performance in Coming to America brought the civil rights movement out of the Alabama swamps and into the American mainstream. Jane Fonda’s brilliant work in Barbarella dared us to question the pointless futility of the Vietnam War. Through the medium of film, Hollywood has been a force for positive change in America - an evil nation with a bloody past, but a promising future if it would simply follow the loving guidance of the Beautiful People. I’m sure Martin, Coretta, Rosa, and the rest of the cast of The Jeffersons would agree.

That’s what George Clooney tried to tell us when he accepted Heath Ledger’s Oscar the other night, and you could hear the anguish in his voice even as he reminded us of how wonderful he is. America owes so much to our actors and actresses. They fill our sand bags. They serve food at our homeless shelters. They march in our abortion parades. They get drunk, crash their cars, and do informative public service announcements so that we won’t have to. They even fly all the way to Africa to adopt children for a lack of any suitable orphans here at home. Actors give us everything, yet ask for so little in return - save for our unconditional love and political obedience.

If they would simply open their hearts and minds, the useless idiots in Middle America could learn a thing or two from the useful ones in Hollywood.

Anyway, I should be back on a regular posting schedule on Monday. Have a nice weekend, and go see a movie.

The Chronicles of Sean, Part 1

Angry chants of "Death to America! Death to the Great Satan! Boooooo, Great Satan!" echoed through the large, dusty mosque, prompting a couple of swarthy mullahs to brusquely ask Mr. Penn either shut up or leave. But Sean wasn't disheartened. There were plenty of other mosques just itching to have him. Unlike the United States, where Penn is often mocked and ridiculed for being a whiny, righteous jackass, in Iran HE was welcomed with open arms and treated warmly by all the little sand monkeys. There was, unfortunately, a small misunderstanding at the hotel when a meddlesome young valet took it upon himself to iron Penn's carefully rumpled shirts, thus shattering his "grizzled field reporter" motif. Penn lost his temper and reinacted the enraged whining fit he had perfected for just about every film he's ever done, scaring the crap out of the entire hotel staff and summoning the police. It took some serious squinting, punctuated by several irritated puffs from his Turkish cigarette, but he was finally able to convince these simpletons that he was on their side, and was allowed to walk freely amongst them once again.

Danger and Penn are like old friends, playing chess in the park and complaining about their irregular bowel movements. In 2003, he toured Iraq as U.S. troops were marching into Bagdhad, and provided readers of the San Francisco Chronicle with eyewitness accounts of the unfolding madness. Penn credits the ease with which he tours fanatical muslim nations with his journalistic objectivity. As a man who has never been shot at, blown up, or had his head sawn off, he hasn't developed the unfairly negative opinion of fanatical muslims that many other Westerners have. Now, as he strolls through the streets of Tehran, pausing occasionally to scribble in his notepad and squint with weathered determination into the Persian dusk, Penn must be acutely aware of how historians will one day compare him with the likes of Tocqueville, or perhaps that broad who lived with the chimps.

Grades Schmades

Recent news that President John Kerry's grades at Yale were less than stellar has spawned a flurry of anxious emails from readers who suspect that Bush is somehow behind it. While I appreciate the correspondence, I'm afraid you folks are missing the point. If Bush manipulated John Kerry's grades in order to make a progressive intellectual look like a slackjawed dunce, then he has failed miserably. If anything, Kerry's low marks are a testament to his complexity, a portrait of a man too nuanced to be pigeonholed by primitive methods of measuring intelligence. In fact, the entire grading system itself is a flawed construct of the military-industrial complex and should be scrapped.

Grading students like sides of beef isn't only barbaric, it's impractical. Although some white males have managed to slip through the moist, tender cracks of affirmative action, college campuses are far more diverse than they were 40 years ago. The good ol' boy, country club colleges of the ango-elite are a thing of the past. Today, students hail from a variety of racial backgrounds, belief systems, genders, and subgenders, each with their own socio-perceptual and multisensory learning style. As a Professym of Midget Studies and the Kama Sutra at Evergreen State College, I would find it a daunting task to pass any of my little buddies under a grading system that doesn't take into account the cornucopia of cultures that comprise a typical student body.

That's why most progressive universities have discarded such antiquated methods of measuring acquired knowledge. If the principal task of the educational system is to ween students away from the selfish ideals of materialism and class consciousness and mold them into subordinate servants of the international community, then an affective, not cognitive learning scale must be used to determine intelligence. Students must no longer be judged by what they know, but by how they feel about it. In a world struggling under the iron boot of corporate America, math, science, and logic are far less important than sensitivity to social injustice, stewardship for the environment, and compassion for the countless victims of western civilization.

Sure, Bush may have received better grades than Kerry - but while the Shrub spent his college days leading panty raids and drinking margaritas out of the skull of a dead indian, John Kerry was a young man driven to excel, giving brilliant anti-war speeches and denouncing imperialist U.S. aggression at every opportunity.

Dumbya and Kerry's college report cards may be good material for late night jokesters, but when one considers how the students spent their time at Yale, there's little doubt who the real moron is.

Bush's Court Harshes Mellow of Really Sick Dudes

The United States Supreme Court, a wholly owned and operated subsidiary of BushCheneyburton Inc, has declared open season on the chronically ill, ruling unanimously to deny America's teeming masses of sick dudes access to life-preserving ganja.

The horrible news had a devastating effect on the entire staff of Seattle Hemp Products. Helpless, I watched from my cubicle as a tsunami of suffering swept through the office, the icy hand of death gripping my friends and co-workers one by one. After years of 20/20 vision, Earl in Accounting suffered a relapse of glaucoma and had to be helped out to his car. Janice in Human Relations, severely crippled ever since a cast iron bong fell on her foot back in college, was able to make thirteen trips to the snack machines a day with the help of sweet Mary Jane. By this afternoon, she was back in a wheelchair, all because Bush won't allow her just one little toot of the only medicine that will cure her.

As an American with a disability, I also took the news pretty hard. When I became disoriented by a strobe light and fell off my beanbag chair, severely injuring my back, I searched high and low for a doctor who would prescribe the incredibly large amounts of medicinal marijuana needed to ease my unbearable pain. I finally found him in Dr. Harry Garcia, the World's Grooviest Doctor. Before Dr. Harry, I didn't have the strength to pass a cast iron bong around my UC Berkeley dorm room without dropping it. A quick trip to Dr. Harry's Roadside VW Van of Healing and I was back to my daily workout regimen. That's all gone now. Bowing to the orders of his Big Pharmaceutical Buddies, Bush has cruelly yanked the macrame hemp rug of hope out from under all those who suffer from chronic illness. My spine is beginning to twitch already.

But we'll fight on. Just as Rosa Parks defied an unjust law and inspired John F. Kennedy to free the slaves, we will fire up our orthopedic hookas and send a clear message to Bush and his big pharmaceutical buddies that...

whoa...dudes...what was I talking about?

Susan Lucci Finally Wins Pulitzer Prize

The incorrigible Erica Kane has walked down the aisle seventeen times, but when it comes to the Pulitzer Prize, soap diva Susan Lucci has ever been the bridesmaid, never the bride. This year, the curse has finally been broken.

Over the past twenty seasons of ABC's All My Children., Erica Kane has battled alcoholism, drug addiction, amnesia, multiple personality disorder, paralysis, demon posession, narcolepsy, menstrual cramps and chronic halitosis. She's been in three car crashes, six plane crashes, five night club fires, and was stranded on a deserted island with a man she despises no less than six times. She was raped by her father, raped by her brother, raped by her ex-husband, raped by a midget lesbian biker gang, and even raped by her own evil twin. She's lost nine babies, had six abortions, put three children up for adoption (two of which turned out to be midget lesbian bikers), faked her own death twice, and committed nine separate murders for which she served a combined total of six episodes in prison. Yet it wasn't until writers teamed Erica up with armed insurgents and had her willingly participate in the public execution of Iraqi election workers, hang the charred corpses of infidels on the Pine Valley Bridge, and dance atop the burning wreckage of a military Humvee, that Susan Lucci finally became the darling of the Pulitzer Prize Commission.

Although the Pulitzer has always eluded Lucci, she has won several Golden Globes, an Emmy, two People's Choice Awards, and was nominated for a Nobel Prize for a 2003 episode in which she cursed western civilization and then wiped her ass with an American flag.

So congratulations and a great big bottle of Febreeze to Susan Lucci, winner of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Journalism!