Images from a Thursday afternoon

There are reasons to love the Goat (and yes, he successfully eliminated the glug-glug-glug).

Lecho sandwich prior to being folded in half and eaten hot-dog style by resident Irish Hungarian.

Yes, there are a bunch of bikes including an old-fashioned tandem in the House of Goat and Irish Hungarian.

Did I mention that there are reasons to love the Goat? (And your humble hostess does indeed expect at least one voice to rise up from the general readership and comment on this device, which is about three hundred years old and virtually indestructible [to clarify, your humble hostess is referring to the device the Goat is dragging and not the Goat proper]).

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Sophia Loren

Money

A dollar bill lies crumpled to your right, a bible rests righteously to your left. Erase belief from the scene and one becomes a slip of paper and the other a book, but which garners more faith? Lay one upon the altar of the Golden Arches and delivered unto you shall be a paltry burger. Whether or not the Virgin Mary shall be depicted by the sesame seeds of its bun, however, is anybody's guess.

Money equalizes. Money defines.

People control money. Money controls people.

Describe the differences between a one dollar bill and a one hundred dollar bill. Do not use the word worth. Do not use the word value. Do not use the word buy. You may use the word zero.

Money is fiction.

Money is indifferent, yet there is bitter money, kind money and honest money. Money reads the palm of he who holds it.

(shhh--here's a secret: Clench money too tightly and poison will flow between you and it.)

Luck and money are kissing cousins. Everyone wants as much of both as they can get even though either can turn bad on a dime.

One man stands before a vending machine with empty pockets and lips parched. Another just as thirsty stands waist deep in a roomful of quarters and no vending machine.

What is the value of a handful of coins?

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A little bit me, a little bit you

Liberalism is not a mental disorder

Although Michael Savage's book Liberalism is a Mental Disorder came out in 2005, I've had the term lobbed at me twice in the last week. I haven't read the book, but Savage's flames were fanned by the likes of Lyle Rossiter:

When the modern liberal mind whines about imaginary victims, rages against imaginary villains and seeks above all else to run the lives of persons competent to run their own lives, the neurosis of the liberal mind becomes painfully obvious.

News alert: The impetus behind most of my liberal tendencies has nothing to do with my imagination, a sense of entitlement or infantile tendencies. It stems from a sense of obligation.

I don't want to live in a country that turns its back on the most vulnerable populations. I'm doing fine, thank you very much. I don't need any assistance, but PLEASE DO use some of my tax dollars to help out sick impoverished kids and seniors and to ensure all women have safe and easy access to reproductive healthcare and to give top quality care to our members of the armed services and and and ... I don't need to give you my whole list. You get the picture.

I understand there is fraud and perversion in public services and it makes me MAD AS HELL. You can bet I'd like to see that curtailed. I want to see tight smart management in those sectors. I want the very best value for my tax dollar. But if you're going to turn a hungry kid away from food in order to avoid those unfortunate side effects, don't ask me to jump on that band wagon.

The ideological crux of my "liberalism" is this: I support giving part of what I have in order to raise the collective human experience for all.

I am thoroughly sick of being called names for political beliefs that aren't all that radical, but if you call a reasonable sense of obligation to society crazy, then let me be crazy.

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Phone cam round-up special edition: Duct Tape Festival

There is duct tape at the Duct Tape Festival.

You can get a BBQ Pork Sundae at the Duct Tape Festival.

If you're at the Duct Tape festival and need a dress, you're in luck.

A lot of Duct Tape Festival goers opt for a corn dog.

They have regular dogs at the Duct Tape Festival as well.

The world-famous "taco in a bag" is available at the Duct Tape Festival.

A lot of people at the Duct Tape Festival make duct tape flowers.

Duct Tape bowling is a popular activity at the Duct Tape Festival.

At the Duct Tape Festival, the Goat enjoyed a "french fry boat."

The best thing at the Duct Tape Festival was a life sized replica of the Heisman Trophy. But this wasn't your everyday run-of-the mill life-sized replica of the Heisman Trophy.

When you least expected it, this Heisman Trophy statue moved real slow and stole french fries from french fry boats and poked kids going into the duct tape craft tent and even made funny faces the real Heisman Trophy guy would make if it could.

Hey Moving Heisman Trophy Guy: you beat a whole boat full of tacos in bags and BBQ Sundaes. See you next year!

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Last photo in today's round-up courtesy of the Avon Heritage Duct Tape Festival.

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Got meat?

Photo courtesy of Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum

Lady Gaga's meat dress arrived in Cleveland yesterday for display at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum.

Despite getting media attention from points across the globe, Todd Mesek, Rock Hall Vice President of Marketing and Communications, took the time to chat with me and make this insider story for Fresh Water possible.

I LOVED Todd's take on the dress, with the Rock Hall using it as bait--just like Gaga did. And he nailed it, everyone was a-buzz about this silly dress including me. The story consumed the better part of my afternoon.

Human beings are weird. I love my job.

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John O'Brien and Vegas Mavens

Bill, Erin and John O'Brien, 1970

 Vegas Mavens has posted an essay about my brother John and his novel Leaving Las Vegas.

During our interview, Mavens writer Josh and I discussed one of my favorite passages from the book that appears on page five. This burst of poetry and geometry absolutely dazzles me:

His point was made, and he moved along, in keeping with the tangential nature that must consume at least one of them. There is a bottle in his future--perhaps sooner a glass--elsewhere on the line. Sera is a circle, twenty-nine years around.

There is a woman (a circle) and a man (a straight line). The metaphor is perfect in it's every permutation: in the primal symbols of female and male, and in the visual moment when Ben and Sera first glance off each other. Their tangential one-point contact is also an accurate representative of their relationship as a whole. His line does not bisect the circle or thread through it's middle just as Ben does not penetrate Sera.

After their brief and chaste affair, Sera will continue to roll around her diameter and Ben's line will plod on. That line is resolute in its path and the liquor that marks it. Whether it comes to an end or continues along towards a spiritual vanishing point depends on the reader and how he spends his Sunday mornings. Sera's age, 29, is a prime number, divisible only by itself and the number one (how much do I love that?).

Hence on page five, John has effectively diagrammed his entire novel in 50 easy words.

All I can do is sigh. All I can do is shake my head. All I can do is put my fingers on the goddamn keyboard.

Goddamn.

Josh and I talked and talked and talked, but we didn't get to all of it. There are parts of the film that I like very much, such as the sad melodic opening:



Insider note: At 3:06, Stuart Regen walks through the set in a cameo appearance. It is perhaps subtler than those of Richard Lewis and Steven Weber, but far more significant. Long before Ben and Sera glittered on the silver screen, Regen plucked a copy of Leaving Las Vegas from a bargain book bin because he liked the cover. He purchased the book for one dollar and subsequently fell impossibly in love with the story. He optioned the rights for $2,000.

Without Stuart Regen, Leaving Las Vegas would never have been made into a film. He succumbed to non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in August, 1998.

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Thanks again to Josh for an evocative and fresh viewpoint on the Leaving Las Vegas story and John.

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Refrigerator round-up

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Family, meet refrigerator.

Refrigerator, meet Family.

Leftover ham: check

Leftover baked beans: check

Leftover potato salad: sorry, I ate it

Eggs: oops, fresh out

Leftover chicken pot pie soup: check

Various dairy products (cream cheese, yogurt, cottage cheese): check

A bunch of other crap (beverages, condiments, whatever): check

Vegetable/fruits: probably

Combine items listed above with other kitchen/pantry ingredients for today's sustenance. Check the freezer before totally freaking out (Mr. Stouffer might be hanging out in there). 

The housewife has left the building.

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Parade the Circle 2011

A dollar here, a dollar there

Warren Olney's June 9 "To The Point" podcast took a unflinching look at the $10 billion US tax dollars we're pouring into Afghanistan every month.

His most stunning guest was Tom Peter, the Afghanistan correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor. I don't know what his politics are or how long he's been in the Middle East, but Peter had a street level view that bowled me over. His credibility was staggering, and what he said was infuriating.

He'll tell you about the brand new empty schools and clinics you've financed. He'll tell you about the depth of corruption and the illiterate soldiers you've armed and "trained." He'll tell you how 97 percent of Afghanistan's GDP comes from the international community (translation: your tax dollars) and if we pull it, the entire country will more or less turn into a poppy field.

Righties wax furious over $2 million for the new USDA Food Plate program.

Really?

I mean really? Is that what you're worried about?

I hear you bellyaching about Obama's stimulus package and Medicare. At least the bulk of those dollars stay on U. S. soil.

While you're busily taking pennies away from Planned Parenthood, your $10 billion per month is making a tiny percentage of Afghans filthy rich while the vast majority of the population watches on with disdain--at least when they're not cowering beneath terrifying drones.

Make no mistake: the impoverished Afghans know exactly who's fueling those deadly aircraft. And you wonder why they hate us.

So, what are you getting for your $10 billion per month?

Go find an Escalade with an old McCain/Palin bumper sticker. Ask the coiffed suburbanite driver what she thinks.

"Why," will be her doe-eyed blinking response, "it's keeping us safe."

Now then, got Libya?

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Correspondence from mother to daughter

Your humble hostess received the following correspondence from her mother at 12:22 p.m EST on June 6 in the Year Of Our Lord, 2011:

Hi you wonderful person,

Here is the address of the bra that I was talking about:
geniebra.com

The broads on the infomercial have big boobs and they look great in it.

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The world has a lot of reasons to love the Mom of O'Brien.

Hi Mom!

Yes I said hell. Live with it.

To hell with Weiner, give me Joe Namath in pantyhose

Prior to the Twitter kerfuffle, I knew nothing of Anthony Weiner and I'm not interested in him now. All kinds of people have been having all kinds of sex for a long time. So what?

That said, it's funny how the blood red rightie blogs out there are clamoring on and on about Weiner, but had little to say about that Nevada dandy, John Ensign.

When it comes to sex scandals, I stick to one of my cardinal rules: The Only Sex You Need To Worry About Is The Sex You're Having.

I am not completely mum on sex scandals. I wrote about Senator Larry Craig when that scandal broke. In fact, I wrote about him twice.

John Edwards also got my attention.

Yeah, yeah. This stuff has been going on forever. The righties can have their fun over some silly underwear pic. I'd rather dig Joe Namath in pantyhose in 1973. HELL YEAH!

An open letter to the person I cut off on Rt. 36 in Mt. Vernon, Ohio on June 4, 2011:

Hi.

From your point of view, I so deserved to get flipped off.

I tried to mouth I'M SORRY when we were at the stoplight, but you didn't seem to get my meaning. Was that your kid in the backseat? Cute kid.

That was a small car you were driving. You had all the windows open on a hot day, which is my preferred method of travel. I don't like A. C.

Here's the part you don't know: I wasn't in my regular Mini Cooper, which is small like your car. I was in the GoatMobile, which is a lot different and lot bigger than my Mini.

GoatMobile and your humble hostess (see upper left).

I was traveling with my Mom who really likes her A. C. Now I would have happily rode my Mom around in the Mini with the A. C. blasting, but the Mini is eight years old and the A. C. is about kaput: puffing out a feeble stream of barely cool air.

The Mini's A. C. reminds you of an old dog trying hard to get up out of his bed and say hello, which breaks your heart because you remember when he was a puppy jumping and yipping and wagging his tail so hard it hurt plenty when it snapped across your shin.

With Mom and me having a bit of driving to do, the Goat and I decided to switch cars for a day on account of the GoatMobile (being only one year old) still has puppy A. C. Not that I should be saying anything about it, but judging by the dents and rust and your red face in the hot wind, I'm guessing your car's A. C. woofed it's last woof a long time ago.

Does any of this makes sense?

We were headed to a function in Danville that had a start time and an end time and it was about a two-hour drive from home. I'd never been to Danville and I was worried about getting lost and the time and would my hair look okay when I got there and all the stupid crap that fills your brain when you should be paying attention to the road. Don't know if you saw, but that old gal was going so slow in front of me I could have screamed. I swear I checked when I went to pass her but the giant GoatMobile has blind spots I'm not used to. I just didn't see you.

Sorry.

Thank Christ you slammed on the brakes and horn or the rest of the day could have turned out bad all the way around.

Goat and Mini Cooper.

Although I'm much more comfy in my Mini and the Goat is much more comfy in the GoatMobile, sometimes odd combinations work. I don't know anything about you, but I know Mount Vernon is a place with a lot of your God Squad and your Don’t-Tread-on-Me/snake stickers. That said, the Knox County Democrats have their office down at the Square, so the folks around there have clearly learned to tolerate the odd men out.

Well, kind of tolerate.

Maybe that commentary doesn't have anything to do with you. Maybe you're not down with treading snakes or the God Squad. Maybe in another life, we'd get off on better footing, without me about to ram the big GoatMobile into your compact thinger-car (didn't catch the make/model). Until then, I'll try to be more careful. And if you don't mind, maybe you can give the next guy the benefit of the doubt before you flip him the bird.

Apologetically,

Erin

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Barbie: Smoke 'em if you got 'em

Sing it out loud gonna get back honey or: Songs that I bought because I liked the commercial

1. The Golden Age by The Asteroids Galaxy Tour: Heineken probably became uncool while I wasn't looking. If it did, this ad makes Heineken cool again.

This ad recools Heineken.



2. Trouble by Ray LaMontagne: Dog ads are dumb. Dog ads for insurance are über-dumb. That I perked up every time this dog commercial aired in order to listen to the music is embarrassing, but there you go.

The song became 100 times better after I bought it and said bow-wow to the silly ad.



3. Light of the Morning by Band of Skulls: Although I have never wanted a Mustang--even a vintage Mustang, this ad makes me empathize with those who want one to the point of obsession.



4. Petula Clark's A Sign of the Times: Since I already had a CD copy of Clark's 1966 top-40 hit prior to the debut of this Target commercial, this one doesn't really count but it deserves a mention just the same.

If anyone from Madison Avenue has their ears on out there, here's a professional note: despite being a big fan of your efforts mentioned herein, I did not buy Traveler's Insurance or a Mustang. I did go to Target and will probably have another Heineken before I croak, although neither of those activities can be wholly attributed to the associated ads. Obviously enough, iTunes (my online source for these music purchases) garnered the lion's share of my disposable income relative to this round up, so I might as well 'fess up with this last one.

5. Are You Gonna Be My Girl by Jet: I cannot remember if I bought my iPod before I bought the song or vice versa. Either way Steve Jobs got me to pony up for both.

I guess I am gonna be his girl.

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Confidential note to diehard Owner's Manual followers: Yes, I did purchase Under My Sensi by Boozoo Bajou, after posting this provocative footage.

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