S. F. Chronicle: Skanky Hot Strippers Of Love

============= SF GATE MORNING FIX =============
July 30, 2003 -- Happy 40th birthday, Lisa Kudrow
By Mark Morford: [email protected]
http://sfgate.com/columnists/morford/a/
"Lube up, lean into the fire, and laugh"
~~ nil desperandum ~~

== MARK'S NOTES & ERRATA ==
Where opinion meets benign syntax abuse

== Skanky Hot Strippers Of Love ==
Because there's nothing like an epic ritual bachelor party to give life
some true perspective
(By Mark Morford)
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2003/07/30/notes073003.DTL&nl=fix

Oh yes, there will be strippers. There will be skankiness. There might
very well be illegal substances some of which are totally organic to
the natural macrobiotic world and some of which most definitely are not
and all of which make John Ashcroft scowl and pule and seethe with
quiet jealousy.

There will most definitely be booze. And cigars. And gambling and
yelling and laughter and guys sharing hotel beds to save money, and
there will be music and drunkenness and all-night whoknowswhat and
massive hangovers that require Bloody Marys all around, the next day,
almost certainly.

Or maybe not. Maybe I'm just projecting. I have little idea what to
expect. This is my first full-fledged hardcore bachelor-party
adventure, and I'm part of a group consisting of more than 15 other
guys, and it will all go down in Reno and the e-mails are flying and
revealing and somewhat hilarious as the Single Guys vie with the
Married Guys vie with the Crazy Guys as to budgets and activities and
who wants to chip in for a powerboat versus the "entertainment" versus
the limo versus those whose wives clearly instructed them not to do
anything dangerous or illegal or naked or else.

But we are not frat boys. We are not wide-eyed post-pubescent
beer-bongin' twentysomethings seeking alphabet belching and cheap
hookers and snide homophobia and head butting and bad drugs like some
sort of blank-faced future president during his Yale years. Not all of
us, anyway.

We are all at least in our mid-30s and the bachelor in question
recently turned 40 and no one knows how it will all play out, but there
is nothing that indicates this is just a bunch of stuffy dads letting
loose, a buncha square dudes who binge by having one extra glass of
merlot and stay up until 1 am and call it crazy times whoo-hoo oh boy I
gotta go lie down.

We are professionals. We are all grown up and many of us even profess
to be moderately hip and funky and loose and pretty much for just about
anything, age irrelevant and irregardless, and we know damn well how to
hold a proper rite.

We have all Been Around Awhile and hence we know how to indulge and
imbibe and know our limits and know how to push them, or at least we
know which of us don't have any limits at all, and therefore are aware
of whom we might have to protect and maybe stop from accidentally
marrying the encephalitic transvestite ketamine junkie named Haroldine.
Unless, you know, he really wants to.

Bachelor parties are a bizarre and unique tradition. Women have an
entire array of rites, bachelorette parties and bridal showers and baby
showers and Tupperware parties and Mary Kay brainwashings and
oh-my-God-look-at-these-super-cute-shoes-I-got-on-sale showers and few
indeed are the men who can tell any of them apart, really, except one
features some nice finger sandwiches and Baby Gap swag and at the other
everyone gives vibrators and bad lingerie. Or something.

But a bachelor party is a bachelor party. We have only one. Certain
things are expected. Certain slightly debauched, celebratory attitudes
are almost mandatory. There is almost no avoiding it and I suppose you
almost have to embrace the sweet all-American depravity as you give a
winking nod to Tom Hanks and Adrian Zmed and Tawny Kitaen and a dead
donkey just yesterday, now 244 total U.S. deaths, hey screw them they're just
a buncha kids and war is heck and Bob Hope, well, he entertained the
troops for years and lifted the nation's war-ravaged spirits during a
time when we actually thought we were doing something right, some sort
of moral good, fighting an actual enemy, right or wrong, as opposed to
now where we're just, you know, slaughtering thousands and occupying a
bitter nation in the name of petrochemical profits and strategic
political power and vacuous empire building and buffing up dad's
military portfolio. "A gifted comedian who entertained audiences for
decades with his unique talents, Bob Hope brought joy and laughter to
our nation," Bush said in a proclamation, before adding, "Pam Anderson
and Kid Rock, our nation turns its lonely eyes to you, woo woo woo.
P.S.; sorry about all the death and homelessness and joblessness and
environmental crap," he continued, in a gin 'n' ether haze. "Suckers."

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2003/07/28/national1747EDT0691.DTL&nl=fix
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2003/07/28/national1742EDT0689.DTL&nl=fix

== Pot Prices Again Jump .0001 Percent For About Three Minutes ==
Soldiers at a highway checkpoint in northern Mexico found 7.4 U.S. tons
of marijuana hidden in a truck, the defense department reported Monday,
sigh, yawn, as if anyone was listening, or cared, as if the news wasn't
totally pedestrian and actually sort of depressing and sad, really, as
some poor driver schlub will be undoubtedly be arrested and the profit
from the ounce-by-ounce sale of 7.4 tons of pot won't make it to the
starving U.S. economy as meanwhile roughly 2.7 billion tons actually
does, ha ha, whatever, I mean are they really serious? Is the "War on
drugs" still actually being waged? Aren't we over this yet? Doesn't
yanking 7.4 million tons of pot off the market (and into the Mexican
black market) seem like just the most trivial and inane thing in light
of war and death and BushCo lies and the fact that 0.04 tons of that
pot was earmarked for the Bush twins and Noelle? Sure enough, the
driver of the truck, Jose Joaquin Cardenas, was arrested at the
checkpoint. Meanwhile, Chris Taylor, 23, of Sacramento was barely
perturbed to have to pay one dollar more for the two ounces of "totally
decent" scag weed he bought from his pal Julian given how supplies were
sort of slightly infinitesimally tighter these past few minutes. "Damn,
I was gonna use that dollar to buy guns and porn," he lamented. "Oh
well. Maybe I'll try church instead."

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2003/07/28/international1059EDT6115.DTL&nl=fix

== Screw The Schools, Go Buy A TV, God Bless America, Redux ==
BushCo's economic team traveled through America's heartland (read:
places where patriotism means never having the nerve to ask, just what
the f--k do you think you're doing to my country, Shrub?) Tuesday
seeking to dispel gloom with a forecast that the U.S. economy is poised
to come roaring back, aided by the president's inane tax cut package
that no one really needed or cared about and that the country can't
possibly afford and which has sent the deficit skyrocketing into the
record books and which won't be a tax cut at all, really, as property
taxes on the middle class will actually *increase* to pay for the
goddamn thing, all of which made the president's economic team secretly
loathe their jobs and wish they could right now be drunk on a boat
somewhere in Bermuda instead of having to face this useless tax cut
crap. However, even as the Cabinet officials were delivering that
optimistic assessment, The Conference Board in New York reported that
consumer confidence took a sharp tumble in July as Americans reacted
with nervousness to the unemployment rate's hitting a 9-year high of
6.4 percent in June, gosh go figure. "This historic day sure is one for
the history books of history," Shrub mumbled, squinting hard and trying
to look like he knew what day it was. "Sorry about all the jobless and
the homelessness and the global anti-U.S. sentiment and all the dead
U.S. soldiers and Iraqi children. Here have 400 bucks. There there, all
better now?"

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2003/07/29/financial0955EDT0044.DTL&nl=fix