Blog Master G

It’s amazing what you can accomplish when you set your mind to it. The human spirit truly is amazing.

As much of a pain as it’s been these past three days producing 100 Faces of Marin — and as daunting and overwhelming as it has often seemed — I truly believe that you can accomplish anything you set out to do, especially if you’re working with others who are equally dedicated to the cause.

Pulling together with Jen, my Dad, and the rest of the 100 Faces team these past few days has been pretty incredible in terms of what we’ve achieved.

The end is in sight… and we will all have a beautiful, quality book of which we can be very proud.

Check out Dan’s interesting commentary, War is Peace, on Mere Sketches:

“(W)ar for Bush is like peace for the Democrats. In war, Republicans get to play on their traditional strength of national security. The party in power benefits from the rallying around the flag. US soliders – stuck in the middle – are damn good at their jobs, which can save the asses of Rumsfeld et al when they mess up. In war, triple amputees like Max Cleland become traitors and war heros like John Kerry become ‘French’, which is Bush-speak for Fag.

“In peace, people are concerned about health care – which Democrats know something about Republicans don’t. They’re concerned about jobs, which Clinton created and Bush destroyed. They’re concerned about the environment, which Bush has an almost pathological hatred for and [some] Democrats spend their lives protecting.”

Do Democrats and Republicans have inherently conflicting missions? Or at least strengths?

What an intense weekend. We spent about 28 hours on Saturday and Sunday working on the editing and production of 100 Faces of Marin. And we still have at least 8 hours to go tonight and tomorrow night. Of course, we also have to go to our day jobs.

Meanwhile, the temperature continues to drop and it’s really feeling a lot like fall. We turned on the central heat for the first time last night. It’s awesome. The former owner installed a new furnace, but we still need to look into this whole heating contract thing in case we have problems this winter (knock on wood).

The trees are slowly changing into vibrant colors; their leaves are rapidly falling.

It’s been more than 6 years (when I was Editor-in-Chief of my college newspaper) since I stayed awake into the wee hours of the morning working on the layout of a print publication — until last night/early this morning.

Jen and I are doing the production for my Dad’s latest book, 100 Faces of Marin, and we’re in the final stretch. We were up until 4am last night/this morning, and it brought back many memories of the old days in the Misc. office (I have no idea what’s going on in that photo, Shrey; do you?).

From the minutia in the text… finding and replacing of correctly-formatted single quotes, double quotes, double spaces, en-dashes, em-dashes… to the tweaking of placed text, pull quotes, tracking… to the print outs of completed pages hanging on the walls of our office… it feels like The Miscellany News all over again.

Some of my best memories of college were working on that crazy paper with some of the most scarily dedicated people around, many of whom are still close friends. To this day, it continues to amaze me how much we managed to achieve week after week, some of us working 40+ hours in addition to being full-time students.

Last night was the first Presidential debate between Bush and Kerry (full text). Most of the pundits immediately following the debate — even conservatives like Joe Scarborough — had immediately declared Kerry the winner. That was pretty obvious. I thought Kerry kicked some ass.

Kerry was right on the ball the entire time, citing facts, providing intelligent responses, addressing accusations, and even succinctly retorting the flip-flop charge that Bush kept bringing up.

Some of my favorite moments:

• Bush’s reference to a “kind of a pre-September 10th mentality” (get that man a calendar!).
• The candidates’ praising of each other’s daughters (huh?).
• Bush’s inability to comment on Putin’s actions in Russia, but isntead short-circuiting and somehow going back to Saddam.
• Bush’s Missy Johnson story: “You know, it’s hard work to try to love her as best as I can.”
• Bush’s getting flustered, starting down one track, then switching gears: “I don’t think we want to get to how he’s going to pay for all these promises. It’s like a huge tax gap and — anyway, that’s for another debate.”

I think it was clear who the more thoughtful, qualified man for President is, and I look forward to the next debate.

Stranded Republicans featuring Rebecca Romijn.

Last night was my father-in-law’s birthday, so the in-laws came to town and we all went out on the town. We first went to the Original Saratoga Springs Brew Pub, which we knew was closing since it’s been sold, but were saddened to find that they’ve run dry and only have two crappy beers on draft and more crappy beers by the bottle. The food menu was also sad. So we left.

Then we went to Bailey’s Cafe, which is more cafe than acutal dining, so we had a round of drinks before continuing our trek.

We ended up eating a delicious pasta dinner at The Wheat Fields, a place that makes its own pasta. Jen and I had only been once before, back in the winter. It was excellent again.

After dinner, we proceeded to what’s become one of our favorite local hangouts, the Saratoga Brewery (not to be confused with the brew pub, which is shutting down). We had a round of pints and filled the growler, and learned that one of the guys who was there last night (and with whom we’d chatted before) is actually Rachel Ray‘s father. So that was cool. (Sidenote: We have the same 1948 Chambers stove that Rachel Ray uses on her show.)

Today I was contacted by one of the producers of a new DVD called Bushisms, which chronicles all the unforgettable “What the fucks?” of he who resides in the White House.

You can watch an extensive and hilarious preview of the DVD, or order it online for $12.98.

Here’s the official blurb:

Bushisms the book is now Bushisms the DVD — hosted by comic uber-genius Brian Unger of The Daily Show. The DVD features Al Franken and others commenting on nucular-strength malapropisms from the presidentiary such as:
# “War is a dangerous place.”
# “Karyn is a West Texas girl, just like me.”
# “Rarely is the question asked, is our children learning.”
Check it out at http://www.bushism.net

What does $87 billion look like? You know, that money that we’re sending to Iraq instead of to our children, education, healthcare, environmental cleanup. It looks like this.

[ Via Jenny and Joe in DC ]

Last night I dreamt that Jen and I were hanging out in downtown Saratoga Springs, as we often do, but unlike most nights, the town wasn’t too packed. Many of the bars were actually closed, a rare thing. But one interesting thing about the dream was that many members of my old Vassar Ski Team were there hanging out.

A quick A9 search for “Vassar Ski Team” yields Marist as the number one result. We couldn’t have that, now could we? So hopefully this post will soon be the first result, and perhaps a place where members of the VC Ski Team, new and old, can come together and reminisce. Please use the comments form below.

Vassar Ski Team
February 1999

I loved the ski team. Officially, we were the club who competed with other NCAA Division III schools. And we did pretty well, considering our lack of an actual coach. But most of all, we were a group of friends who loved to ski and loved to party. Many of my fondest memories of Vassar were skiing with you guys.

I watched a teaser on CNN this morning for a look behind the medical team that is responsible for maintaining the President’s health. How nice that the President has a team of not just one, but five doctors on call to make sure he’s OK at all times.

I wonder how much of our tax dollars go to pay for that expense? Considering that the average salary for a doctor ranges anywhere from about $150,000 to $560,000, let’s assume for a moment that these “Presidential doctors” make a healthy $300k. They have to keep the most powerful man in the world healthy, after all, so that’s probably a conservative estimate. Regardless, five doctors times a conservative $300k per year equals $1.5 million per year. And that’s just for the doctors. There’s also a full nursing and administrative staff to go along with this.

All this while 45 million Americans go uninsured. That’s 15% of the estimated 294 million Americans. Again using a conservative estimate of $400 per month to insure each of these people, that’s $4,800 per year. If we leave the President with just one doctor, that’s $1.2 million of tax payer dollars that are suddenly made available. And guess what? If that were to pay for health insurance for those without it, then suddenly 250 people can go to the doctor without going broke. 250 people. Of course, the ripple effect (healthy people means less strain on whole system) makes the cost savings even more significant.

This is not to say that the President shouldn’t have personal doctors. This is to say: How ironic that we elect one man to lead us, and we pay for him to stay in top-notch shape, yet so many of us go without basic medical needs.

Give me one good reason why we shouldn’t have national healthcare.

The full show on this topic airs Sunday at 9pm Eastern Time on CNN. But CNN probably won’t examine it from this angle. My guess is that their angle will be more about oohing and ahhing.