When did THAT happen?

Holy crap, Barack Obama was born in 1961. That, once again, is 1961, as in a year after me, and he’s got at least an imaginable chance of becoming president.

Presidents are supposed to be old guys. Even Bill Clinton, a boy-wonder governor and a mighty young president, is significantly older than me. George W. Bush (who’s actually older than Clinton, I believe) seems mighty young to be a president. Presidents are not supposed to be younger than me, because that means I’m old. Therefore, Barack Obama cannot be president.

Look, it’s a better reason than some others you’re going to hear in the next year.

Capitalizing on the freshly dead

There are 2,839 Anna Nicole Smith items for sale on Ebay as of this writing, including bobblehead dolls (buy ’em in cases of  48 if you want), the predictable raft of photos, a signed floorboard, memorial magnetic ribbons, “God Bless Anna Nicole Smith” window decals, videotapes, poker chips, T-shirts, magazines, rubber stamps, handbags, buttons, DVDs, die-cast toy cars, alleged signed personal checks to the phone company, drink coasters, custom choppers (Buy It Now price: $125,000), posters, wall clocks, refrigerator magnets, Web domain names, mousepads, “Finally Found Peace” pillowcases, trading cards, dog tags, laserdiscs, guitars, bracelets, calendars, sketches, wigs, tribute bracelets and on and on and on.

She was alive at this time yesterday. Now she’s a post-mortem industry.

Ground Control to Major Strange

You’ve probably heard about this story by now, and of course you can’t make stuff like this up, with the astronaut strangeness and the maybe-affairs and the freaked-out drive from Texas to Florida to administer a little pepper spray ‘justice’ or something. Sure, it seemed like a bad Lifetime movie, but what really surprised me was the late-innings scenario the prosecution played on the defendant.

Just as Ms. Astronaut was rolling out of jail on bond, the prosecution came back at her with a weak-looking attempted-first-degree-murder charge, in what for all the world looked like an attempt to trump up something to keep her in the slammer. The judge in the case saw right through that and gently hinted that the attempted murder charge was gonna be hard to make, and you could sense that the prosecutor in court knew better but was under orders from her elected boss to polish this turd,  and the judge granted the defendant bail yet again.

It’s just going to get weirder from here.

The losers keep coming

The crew was in L.A. this week and they found quite a few decent performers, but you wouldn’t know that from the show that was broadcast, which was filled with freaks. There’s one more tryout to come in San Antonio, and then we can move to the Round Nobody Cares About, where most of these ‘performers’ are sent home. After that, we get into eliminations and we can see if we can find ourselves another aging Soul Man.

Turn the page

My wife wanted to see Bob Seger, so I agreed, and last night we went to the Verizon Center and saw the old man (he’s 61 now). It actually was a decent show, and every old hippie in a 200-mile radius seemingly was there, and I’d guess he sold 15,000 or so tickets. He changed keys on a number of songs, dropping the high end on a voice that 30 years ago sounded like it had been soaked in cheap bourbon, and I guess the thing that surprised me the most was that he had far more hits than I first remembered. I literally could sing every song except the three or four that are off his new album.

Another thing that struck me on this old-school night was his old-school staging. There were no video screens; the backdrop was a simple black scrim; there were half as many stage lights as I see at a lot of concerts these days; and even the stage was a simple block with a few spotlighted areas. I don’t think I’ve seen a big-auditorium stage that simple since the early 1980s. Here’s a crummy shot from a camera phone: