"And joining me on the accordian, a topless Miley Cyrus!"

After an extreme Passover Break for Maya's daycare (TWO WEEKS!), we're back in the regular groove as of yesterday. So I'll catch up with y'all by offering a few quickies.

We saw Dan Zanes and Friends over the weekend perform at the Moore Theatre downtown. Maya's been excited for months to soak in a live show yet again. But once we got inside, she wasn't able to deal with the noise and essentially forced Sarah to do laps around various corridors until the show ended. Which gave me some time for a few observations. In no particular order.
1. White women still continue to dance considerably better than white men, even after childbirth.
2. Aging male musicians cannot not surround themselves with increasingly younger, hotter female bandmates, no matter the genre.
3. The soundman for Dan Zanes and Friends should be sacked immediately for gross negligence (even kids can tell you generally how to mike a tap dancer or guest vocalist with a set of bongos).
4. If 3/4ths of the African Americans at the show are on-stage, and the other one is sitting across the aisle from you - you're not exactly seeing a cross-over act.
5. Concert t-shirts are cool. Dood.

On an entirely different level, I'd be remiss if I didn't pile on the Reverend Jeremiah Wright media tour of the last few days. What. A. Trainwreck. If Barack Obama had done what everyone expected and thrown Wright under the bus many many weeks ago, it would have been ugly. Instead, Obama gave what I still believe to be his greatest speech in choosing not to do so. But then the media poked and prodded this obviously egomaniacal Pastor like a caged tiger ad hominem. The result? Ladies and Gentlemen - meet this election's Willie Horton. I watched the Bill Moyers interview and went to bed thinking Rev. Wright was trying to be dignified and still help out one of his past parishioners. Then I saw the NAACP speech. Then the DC Press Club speech. Oy vey. So I must now say that I was wrong. Throw this baggage under the bus. If Obama can't bring himself to do so, he'll end up carrying this distraction around for months and months.

Hope your own baggage is surprisingly light today. Rock on.

Obama's timing couldn't draw a stronger contrast if he delivered "The Speech" with a "Mission Accomplished" banner behind him

Barack Obama delivered his finest speech this morning in Philadelphia. Which is saying a helluva lot, given how many other fine speeches he is credited with delivering in the past. This time he was attempting to quell a storm - the opportunistic tempest stirred up by endless replays of his former Pastor Jeremiah Wright's bombastic sermons over the last few news cycles. In due course, Obama took on race, history, religion and his truly unique ancestry when compared with a typical candidate for any elected office in this Nation (much less the highest in the Land). He did so with characteristic flair, nonetheless weaving in some digs at Hillary and policy positions on education, health care, foreign policy and our image abroad. I've made no secret of my support for him. I will now go a step further. This candidate has the power to change everything. Obama just keeps getting stronger in front of history's caustic glare. I expect he just won over a ton of those wavering in the past few weeks. If he doesn't win the Presidency, I will quit blogging. Which I'm sure would please more than a few of those aimlessly antagonistic readers. But I'll throw down the challenge, nonetheless.

What if you started a War based on lies, had no plan for how to get out, spent trillions of dollars, killed nearly 4000 volunteer soldiers, and fiddled away the same old tune while the economy melted down 5 years later? Any rational student of history would conclude that you'd be pretty well screwed. So on this dubious anniversary, as the Fed throws everything and the kitchen sink into the chasm that is rapidly opening beneath the feet of so many Americans, I'd like to remind Dubya of his oft-repeated phrasing. "History will decide." Yup, for once we agree.

Hope your own anniversaries relate to the good things in life today. Rock on.