Don't sleep in the subway, darling

Overall, I was pretty pleased with the results of last week's elections. We didn't exactly stay up til all hours biting our nails and waiting for the results of Virginia and Montana to see if the Democrats would take the Senate in addition to the House, but we did manage to sit through a couple hours of CNN's "America Votes 2006" coverage, which is saying something for us. I can't watch any "real" news anymore without cracking up at the self-important music*, the swooping camera effects, and the pompous commentators. Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert have finely-tuned their parody/satire/fawning copy of the straight news so well that everything on CNN feels like a joke to me.

I was, however, bummed that Question 1 didn't pass here in the Bay State. Apparently, all the big liquor stores contributed a lot of corporate money to the "No" side of the debate and tried to scare people into thinking their kids would be in mortal danger from all the drunk drivers sure to be on the road after buying their beer at Shaw's, instead of having to WALK NEXT DOOR (oh, the humanity!) and buy it at the drugstore. *sigh* I really don't care too much one way or the other, but it would have been nice to be able to get wine at our Trader Joe's, for pete's sake. Having grown up in a state where they have DRIVE-THROUGH LIQUOR STORES, for the love of christ, I can't see how having wine available at grocery stores is really such a big deal.

I'm glad the Democrats did so well. I don't think they really had as much to do with their victory as the Republicans did, though. I saw Bill Maher on Larry King talking about it, and he put it best:

"What Democrats have to take away from this -- and I think they already have learned this lesson -- is that it wasn't really a victory for you. It reminded me of the World Series. The St. Louis Cardinals didn't really win, the Detroit Tigers lost it. Every game I tuned in, the Tigers were throwing the ball over the infield, over people's heads. The Cardinals just stood on the field and won.

That's sort of where the Democrats are. Let's see if you can win an election against a party that hasn't disgraced itself so horribly in every single way a party could disgrace itself."

When we found out Rumsfeld had resigned, KB and I actually high-fived each other. As if we had something to do with it. Like when your favorite sports team beats a rival and you say, "We won!" You didn't do anything. Your team won and you watched them, that's all.

But I'm still happy.

Thanks for reading.

*Have you seen "Broadcast News"? If you haven't, drop what you're doing (or at least open a new window in your browser) and add it to your Netflix list, for the love of all that is holy. It is one of the most quotable movies EVER, and worth watching just for the very short segment where Marc Shaiman (and some other guy) play the News Theme Writers who are pitching a new theme song for the news to the producer. It's hilarious.