Alan Lebetkin

I saw this girl riding a 10-foot-tall bicycle for no discernable reason other than to get home. She was good while riding, but starts and stops seemed to be a bitch.

Here she is standing beside it at a stoplight. Kind of hard to make out the weirdness with my shitty cell phone pic.

Now watch her mount the thing with a running start:

I have no doubt that, as per usual, these Democrats will pathetically renounce their principles and cave to Republican reasoning, but for now this is pretty awesome.

MADISON – Democratic State Senators who protested the budget repair bill by leaving the state have been found.

The lawmakers are in the Best Western Clock Tower Resort in Rockford Illinois.

Law enforcement officials have been looking for at least one Democratic senator to bring in for a quorum required for a fiscal measure, but Democratic Senator Jon Erpenbach confirmed to Newsradio 620 WTMJ that he and all of his Democratic colleagues boarded a bus and left the state.

“We’re not in Wisconsin right now,” Erpenbach said. “The reason why we’re doing this is because there are some jurisdictional issues that we’d be dealing with.”

Occasionally it’s nice to have politicians represent what you believe. It’s why we vote.

The last 5 years have been a painful evolution in my relationship with the dentist. For the first quarter century of my life, dentists have sung praises of my mouth and it’s perfect little inhabitants. I would breeze through the toothman’s office like a cool wind every other year or so, and rather enjoyed my status as perfection.

Then it all went wrong. I moved to California and flubbed the chore of finding a new dentist. Years passed unattended. I began to notice little black spots. I then put off finding a dentist out of a craven fear of losing my beloved status.

Finally I checked in and it wasn’t pretty. Eight cavities — my first fall from grace was off Mount Everest. The drilling and filling just about killed me with the new discovery of dentist-related pain. Now every return visit is an occasion of angst.

Today was a new first. More drilling and filling, and this time I decided I’m too old for this pain shit. Asked her to numb me up, and she obliged like a champ. For the first time ever I endured several hours with a slack lower jaw. Hated every second of it. And now that feeling has returned, I am regretting that as well. My eggshell white teeth have been shattered and throbbing underneath I found a glistening purple bruise.

I want my youth back, dentist.

Valentine’s day after-work traffic was madness. Took 40 minutes just to get out of the parking garage after work. Every single street, main, side, and tertiary, were filled with cars. Got home one car-length at a time. Turned many a lovers into haters.

It always comes down to fat jokes with Republicans. Always. Always always always. Enjoy!

11 years since Dre’s last album and my love of the guy is still going strong. I was getting worried that his orchestral plucking binge of the last 5 or so years would culminate into a disappointingly mediocre LP, but the flush production of Kush and I Need A Doctor is putting those fears at bay. With Kush, I like how he elevates a filler artist like Akon into a driving force for the song. Solid stuff. Time will tell, but I think the track will still be around in another 10 years, when Dre’s next album comes out.

It can’t be done.

A stranger was appearing in my Facebook news feed a lot lately. One day I noticed he posted a picture of Obama and then made a joke that contained the n-word. It was pretty infuriating. I saw a long comments section and figured there was a flame war in progress. Expanded the thread and saw nothing but new joke beats and tags that his friends were piling on. Then there was one lady who said something about not liking his joke and her son being half black. His response: “I’d be offended too if my son was half N*****.”

Here’s what I could glean about this guy by reading his Facebook profile: He’s a 30-something aspiring comic who lives in Nebraska and prides himself on making shocking statements. Here’s what I know about him: He’ll never make it, even at McDonalds.

This guy wasn’t a comic, so I won’t address him, but I do have thoughts about real aspiring white comics who try racial humor. By all means try it (without the n-word) so you can learn how miserable it makes people and then move on with grace. If you keep at it for, say, 3 months, you’re missing the point. If you make it your thing, you’ve quit comedy.

I’ve studied linguistics and majored in English. I know the day will come when the word is divested of enough connotation that it can be used again — in a historical-people-once-said-this kind of way. But that day won’t come in our lifetime. We’re still among the ones who lived through the civil rights movement. They are our parents and grandparents. They’ve been through enough shit that the last thing they need to put up with is young white people who think they’re clever.

I’ve always wondered why white people get so resentful that they can’t say the n-word in the same way that black people use it. These people, I think, are annoyed that history didn’t begin with their birth. Comedians are particularly at risk of a slip-up since comedy lives on the edge of tragedy and there’s an element of danger to stand-up comedy. But with so many words out there, do you really want to spend all your time on just one?

In yesterday’s post I teased a coming post about the n-word and Facebook. It’ll have to wait because today I saw this:

Ron Paul Asks The Youth To Opt-Out Of America

(Sorry to disappoint my readers. On the bright side, I’m pretty sure I’m the only person who reads these, so technically I’m only letting myself down.)

Quoth the Paul:

Would you consider opting out of the whole system under one condition?” Paul then asked, introducing his plan. “You pay 10% of your income, but you take care of yourself. Don’t asked the government for anything.

O the hypocrisy of Republicans, where does it end! They hate government so much that they become 12-term Representatives in the U.S. House. They love America so much that they can’t wait to abandon it. And to never accept a government service again, does that mean ignoring stop signs? Celebrating potholes as beauteous works of art? More practically, suppose you’re one of those unlucky conservatives who isn’t rich enough to encase yourself in a protective cocoon. Do you then home-school your children instead of sending them to public schools? Might be hard to get in those lesson plans between shifts at McDonalds.

The thinking behind this philosophy is that everyone gets what they deserve. If you were born poor and remain that way, it’s your fault for not pulling yourself up from the bootstraps. The problem with that argument is it only works when the society is just. Some factors making it difficult for every determined poor person to rise on the socio-economic ladder include: corruption, nepotism, accessibility, time restraints, discrimination, etc.

I have no doubt there are countless geniuses stuck making $15,000/yr just to put a roof over their head. Kind of rules out college. Subsistence living is shit.

There are so many obvious holes in this philosophy. I’ve thought a lot about why conservatives — who are so adamant about logic and sound reasoning — would stand by this. My current theory is it’s a form of self-justification for people who lack empathy and have always had the foundations of a fruitful life laid out in front of them (as opposed to needing to build that scaffolding from scratch). Surely there’s a lot of guilt for a person in that position. But if you live by a code that says you deserve it, then you can feel justified the next time you act shitty towards your fellow citizens.

Note, “act shitty” in my book means refusing to participate in taxes. Sorry, but I appreciate stop signs and will pay for them, and I love the government for providing them. If it didn’t, no one else would. Not much profit in stop signs.

Here in my favorite coffee shop, the attention of everyone has shifted to a single table where a girl is enthusiastically performing for her friends The Knights That Go Ni scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

I have no context for what lead to this, but I feel it’s not needed. Enthusiasm for Monty Python is a comedy rite of passage that begins and ends in middle school. Her friends are mortified.

Not helping the matter: She’s doing different character voices.

Yes, this is definitely a life mistake. One can only hope she comes to recognize her error and grow from it.

Tomorrow: The n-word on Facebook: Don’t do it.

For beating UNC, something that I am aware of.

I’m not a big school pride guy and often dismiss these things. My old college roommate texted me yesterday that he’s visiting Duke for the game, and it was nice to hear from him. In our exchange he remarked that not much has changed, and students still blast the same terrible music from their dorm windows. This is not a knock on pop music in general, it’s a very specific knock on the specifically bad taste in music that Duke students have in particular.

There was a mini-controversy my sophomore year when the student union paid untold thousands of our activities fees on booking Counting Crows for the big year-end blast.  This was 2001. I’m no expert on Counting Crows, thankfully, but even I realized how out of touch this seemed.

In conclusion, my roommate’s remark reminded me that I may not have a lot of pride in my school, but I successfully graduated several years before Mike Posner set foot on campus, and for that alone I am proud to be a Duke alumnus.

Go Duke!