A Press Conference to Make Us All Welcome the End of Press Conferences

Maya took down a couple bottles yesterday like a submarine engineer on overdue shoreleave. That amounts to a huge relief on my end because Sarah has a 12-hour call on Sunday and heads back to her regular clinical duties later in the week. So Maya and I are ready to fly on our own when necessary. There's something so satisfying about seeing her suck down a healthy meal and then crash out like a drunken goat - arms and legs all akimbo, face slackened and covered with the gluttonous overflow, eyes partially-closed as if in a trance. Maya still definitely prefers to get her meals straight from the source. But at least we know that once again she's willing to opt for the alternative when the need arises, as it still does every few hours like clockwork.

In a word, Bush's hotly-anticipated press conference last night was bunk. For this they got FOX to postpone a new episode of "The OC" and ruined all the "Will and Grace" cocktail hours in the Castro?!! Abyssmal. I tried to make the best of it - cracked a nice bottle of red and made up a tasty comfort-snacky dinner (our favorite tomato soup and 3 different kinds of insanely-tasty grilled cheese sandwiches). I prepped my shortlist of buzzwords to tally. I watched with interest the back-and-forth between the networks as to whether they'd actually broadcast the presser live, what with yesterday being the first night of May sweeps and all. And then. Bupkis. A big flat pancake of nothing-newness. A warmed-over fizzle from Dubya to open on energy policies and tepidly-reheated Social Security focus group pablum. Weak-ass questions from a zombified White House press corps. Dubya's signature unfunny insider banter with his poorly-nicknamed favorite flacks. Oceans of smirks. Oodles of odd turns of phrase, but still none really worth harping on. And then everyone except ABC and the cable nooz channels cut away before the final question to get to their money-makers. If I could have teleported anywhere, I would have loved to enter Rupert Murdoch's evil lair to hear his reaction to this massive time-suck after being guilted into carrying it live. But as it was, I still took the time to note a few stupid things said stupidly by Dubya. Here goes...

Cliche' Tally

• Iraq/i 14
• Terror/ist/ism 7
• "Noo-q-ler" 6
• Progress 10
• Hard Work 2

I didn't bother to note "freedom" or "democracy" or "Social Security" or any of the other expected themes. So this incomplete list is about as half-hearted as the sentiments that went into Dubya's answers. But I think the tallies are pretty accurate (note: both uses of "hard work" came within the first few minutes of the Q & A, which briefly had me pretty excited).

Other Random Stupid Dubya-isms

• When noting forms of energy available, only "safe, clean 'noo-q-ler' power" got the benefit of modifiers.
  
• Dubya said that "governing by polls" is like "a dog chasing 'er tail." Does he mean that such a "govern'er" will never catch "it" or that it takes a while to get to the actual tail? Because most dogs I've known can easily catch their tails after a few spins. And said dogs seem to enjoy the sensation of biting on it for a bit. So what exactly is Dubya trying to say there?
  
• When asked about Frist's disgusting inclusion in last weekend's "Dems are Against People of Faith" hate-fest, Dubya said that he can "only speak to myself." Twice.
  
• Others have noticed it, but I must ask when did "Pooty-Poot" become just plain "Vlad-a-mur" and how does Putin feel about having his stature reduced so completely to merely a first-name basis? Just imagine FDR calling Stalin "Joe" or Reagan calling Gorbachev "Mikey."
  
• "John Bolton's a blunt guy." The only red meat thrown to a hungry media machine. But that's like saying "the Moon's a big rock" or "guns makey big boom" - you can only boil down obvious crap so far.
• The standard mispronounciations - "con-sor-ti-um" and "pen-in-shu-la" along with the eternally grating "noo-q-ler" - repeated often to show Dubya's persistent state of mind.
• When talking about the aims of his education program, Dubya started with his belief in "simple objectives like literacy and math." OK, if simply having "math" is an aim, the Bushies have got that one covered. So there's some progress, I suppose.

Appropriately, my TiVo cut off the last minute or so of Dubya's final answer. Maybe he announced an historic initiative to eliminate fossil fuel dependence or cut overseas troop deployments or secure our borders. Maybe he promised to actually invite Democratic leaders to the White House again to discuss the impasses reached in his first 100 days of this lame-duck term. Maybe he made a stupid joke about Major League Baseball. I guess I'll never know. And, to be honest, I couldn't care less. After all, Jeff/JD Gannon/Guckert's on Bill Maher's show tonight. Now THERE's something worth watching. Rock on.