Hey Fan Ap’ers! Adam’s little sister Susie here again.

It’s only 20 days, people.  Are you excited?  Me too.  But are you as excited as this reporter I spied on CNN this morning, who simply could not contain his true feelings about our future leader and the stimulus to come?

No, it’s not mature. But the poor man’s deer-in-the-headlights eye bulge makes me want to watch it again and again. In fact, I think that’s what I’m going to do now. Ciao!

PS Happy New Year!  I resolved to keep being as awesome as I am, and so far, so good.  What are your resolutions?  I’m genuinely interested.  Let a sistah know in the comments.

I’ve been holding off on commenting on the choice of Rick Warren for the pivotal Obama administration role of “guy who says goddy stuff for two minutes and then leaves forever.” My position is deeply nuanced, delicately balanced, and hard to decipher, but here it is:

I’m for it.

Yup. And it’s not that I’m for it despite the anguish and fury it’s causing among some of us on the left. I’m for it because of the anguish and fury it’s causing among some of us on the left. We need this. It’s shock treatment, but it’s necessary.

Back in 2000, George Bush oozed into office with the promise of reaching across the aisle, changing that partisan tone in Washington. We’d just been through eight of the most bitterly partisan years in our history, a bullshit impeachment, a fantastically traumatic and divisive “election,” and we needed change. And we got change. We got eight years of significantly more bitter partisanship. Yeeha!

Did Bush not understand what cooperation and bipartisanship looked like? Was he lying about his desire to bring it about? I honestly don’t think so. I think he was weak, and weak people do what is necessary to stay on the side of their friends and allies, rather than trusting their friends and allies will stay on their side. Continue reading this entry »

My friend Adam’s dad, Arthur Spiegelman, died yesterday. Here’s the story, from Reuters, naturally:

Renowned journalist Arthur Spiegelman dies at 68

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Arthur Spiegelman, one of Reuters’ finest writers and longest-serving correspondents, died at home in Los Angeles on Saturday. He was 68.

In his 42 years with Reuters, Spiegelman deployed his sparkling prose on presidential elections, the diplomatic turning points of the Cold War and showbiz murder trials…

You’ll want to read the rest. He was a completely remarkable man. What’s not mentioned in the article is his completely remarkable family, who loved him deeply. I’m sorry to make the shortest day of the year a little darker, but at least we all know it can only get brighter from here on out.

Friends being funny. Funny, funny friends. [Can you tell I’ve been reading a lot of children’s’ books lately?]

First up, Paula Poundstone has just released her first ever CD, available here. What? Her first CD? Yes. My sense is that she was waiting to make sure that it wasn’t some kind of fly-by-night technology. She was understandably cautious after her disastrous 1984 stand-up release, available exclusively on View-Master disks.

Also, my friend Victor Varnado’s movie, “The Awkward Kings of Comedy,” is coming soon to a method-of-seeing near you, and the trailer is now online. Yes, finally a film featuring the comedy stylings of Victor and several other black nerd comedians. Oh, they’re very “street,” but it’s a street populated by muppets. They’re the kind of guys who spent the 70’s annoying everybody by riding the subways carrying around those giant calculators, noisily figuring stuff out while you were trying to read your newspaper in peace. Something something something “deft jam” (note - build a bridge to hilarious “deft jam” joke before publishing this entry…).

Watch this space (or, yes, that website) for more on the movie as it develops.

Forcing hundreds of reporters to laboriously cut-and-paste his unspellable name, Governor Rod Blagojevich had the rug pulled out from over him today by US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald.

At first blush, this quote from the affidavit seem pretty damning:

During the call, ROD BLAGOJEVICH stated, “unless I get something real good for [Senate Candidate 1], shit, I’ll just send myself, you know what I’m saying.” ROD BLAGOJEVICH later stated, “I’m going to keep this Senate option for me a real possibility, you know, and therefore I can drive a hard bargain. You hear what I’m saying. And if I don’t get what I want and I’m not satisfied with it, then I’ll just take the Senate seat myself.” Later, ROD BLAGOJEVICH stated that the Senate seat “is a fucking valuable thing, you just don’t give it away for nothing.”

Or this:

In regards to the Senate seat, ROD BLAGOJEVICH stated “I’ve got this thing and it’s fucking golden, and, uh, uh, I’m just not giving it up for fuckin’ nothing. I’m not gonna do it. And, and I can always use it. I can parachute me there.”

This too, seems somewhat incriminating:

ROD BLAGOJEVICH said that the consultants are telling him that he has to “suck it up” for two years and do nothing and give this “motherfucker [the President-elect] his senator. Fuck him. For nothing? Fuck him.” ROD BLAGOJEVICH states that he will put “[Senate Candidate 4]” in the Senate “before I just give fucking [Senate Candidate 1] a fucking Senate seat and I don’t get anything.”

Blagojevich’s lawyers quickly cautioned against rushing to judgement, saying that “there are perfectly innocent explanations for some of these statements, which have been taken grossly out of context.”

The lawyer was asked for a possible exculpatory context.

“Um… a giant… reverse… sting operation? Or a rehearsal… for a school play? There are many, many plausible… things… here.”

I hope you all had great turkeys/veganturkeysubstitutes.

We Felbers gathered in New York, and had a tremendously good time. El Baz met his cousin Hugo, his Aunt Susie, Uncles Ed and Mike, two doggies, and of course, The Granny. He now has a very good opinion of all of the above, although he complained of a bit too much face-licking from one or two individuals (ahem- Mike!).

Pictures are forthcoming.

Eight months seems to be a particularly good age to take a baby on a plane. Or maybe Baz is just a particularly good baby. Either way, by his second vodka tonic he was a complete angel, though a little overly sentimental.

Now we’re back in LA, and I’m hard at work on that comic book. I’ll tell you more soon, but for now, just know that it’s a five-book series, it comes out early next year, and it involves… SKRULLS! Yes, Skrulls!

No, I didn’t know too much about them either. I’ve never really been a Comic Book Guy, at least, not a devoted fan, not enough to cringe appropriately when someone invokes them nasty Skrulls.

But why should that stop me? Excelsior!

I know - you’re tired of updates, you want CONTENT. You hunger for it.

Not tonight. I’m studyin’ up for my return to “Wait Wait,” putting young master Sebastian to bed, and working on my Marvel comic book.

Yes, you read that right. I shall explain anon.

Meanwhile, I’ll leave you with some recent work. I wrote… well, a lot of this. The rules and the ensuing editorial. Mainly I enjoyed the below finale because it wasn’t terribly issue-oriented - it was silly, and silliness is a luxury. We’d fought long, fought hard, and we felt pretty damned good about things. Not smug, just… good.

Well, a looong season, a presidential election, a pilot, and - most recently - a fun bleary weekend playing The Game followed by a terrible cold has kept me away from the site.

Real Time’s season finale is Friday (I do hope you enjoyed it). After which, well, stuff is brewing. And I’ll be here more often. And we’ll get together then, folks, you know we’ll have a good time then.

Cautiously optimistic. Cautiously… very optimistic.

You?

Hi ho FanAp’ers it’s Adam’s little sister Susie again.

You might remember me from one of my quarterly posts. Who could forget the lyrical, “Hey I’m on TV,” the eye-opening “Hey I’ve got a new blog to hawk,” or the riveting “Hey I have the hots for Nicholas Sarkozy.”

No one, that’s who. But I’m not all about shameless self-promotion and lusting after world leaders. Oh wait. Yes I am. Hoo ha! Here goes!

The subtle ad above is because this Thursday, 10/30 will be my premiere on the hit show “The Smoking Gun Present’s: World’s Dumbest” at 9PM e/p on truTV! For all the people who enjoy telling me they don’t have TV: I’m a big dumb expert who contributes stupid stuff here: dumbasablog.com.

Also, on election night I’ll be doing a set in NYC with The Obama Girls of Comedy Tour. It’s free, and either way we’re all going to need a stiff drink that night, so come on by and say howdy whydoncha?

Finally, Rep. John Sarbanes of Maryland is kinda cute, especially when wearing a civet.

UPDATE:  A cut of the show just came in.  I’m not on it.  I’ll be on one of these Thursdays, maybe even many, but not tonight.  I broke my own “never tell people you are going to be on TV” rule and got burnt — Yow!