Changing my major

Since lawyering (as they say in the trade) hasn't exactly worked out, I've trained my well-honed, six-figure powers of logic towards a more likely goal: Winning the lottery, then pulling a Nic Cage in his last great movie.

As of today, the California Super Lotto jackpot is $9 million, and the Mega Millions jackpot is $12 million. Both offer life-changing money. However, as you can see, your chances of winning Super Lotto are 134 million times greater than a win in Mega Millions. It makes no sense, then, to play Mega Millions when you are hundreds of millions of times more likely to win Super Lotto. Being in the gambling business, the lottery knows that most people are so greedy that they would kill their chances of winning, just for an infinitesimal shot at that extra $3 million.

The best game to play is Fantasy 5, with a 1 in 575,757 chance, and jackpots around 100k. Enough for a lost weekend at Pechanga, at least.

Of course, neither I nor anyone close enough to me to hand over a cut of the cash will ever actually win the lottery. This is just a hypothetical, like a decent job or a threesome.

The Whip is a band, not a car.

The Nasty Old Cooter Monologues

Why is it is impossible for an attractive woman to be in 'The Vagina Monologues?' I don't mean one who isn't straight, or who wasn't hot 30 years ago; I mean a woman who's vagina you would actually want to see and/or touch.

There would never be a "Parthenon" monologue, or a "sunset over half dome in Yosemite national park" monologue. This is because these things are so beautiful, so precious, that to talk about them without actually showing them would be pointless and bizarre.

Now, I know the men and lesbians in my audience will know what I mean when I say that a well-coiffed vagina falls into exactly this category. It would be frustrating, to say the least, to sit through a description of it without some visual frame of reference, some point when the audience can let out a sigh and say collectively, "Damn, that's a nice pussy!"

If you are the director of this play, you would know that it is vital to use an actress whose vagina you would never, ever want to see, lest the audience be distracted by imagining said vagina performing its intended function in biology, at least as it relates to a penis or a fist-shaped double-dong.

Saturation

In science, a saturation point is reached when a given space can contain no more mass without either reaching a point of equilibrium between the space and the mass, or the complete annihilation of said space.

Here in L.A., the hipster douchebag population has achieved saturation. The question is now whether they will reach equilibrium, or be destroyed in a hail of mutton-chops and non-prescription vintage glasses.

Of course, like other calamities upon society, they will not go quietly. Hippies had their summer of love morph into a winter of disco and velvet. Yuppies bravely clung to relevance until roughly September of 2001. Hipsters, by contrast, are still waiting for their Charlie Manson, the one person or event that will blow open their PBR-addled brains and force them to get jobs that don't involve a coffeeshop, a record store, or an Econoline van.

As much as I would love to see them all flying through the air like a trailer in a tornado, my prediction is that equilibrium will be reached, and they will be absorbed into the society at large, much like hippies and yuppies before them.

It will be interesting, then, to see them in the future. Somehow I don't think the sobriquet "aging hipster" will have quite the genteel cache it has when applied to an old hippie. No one bats an eye if Tommy Chong throws on some CSNY and lights up a joint. But imagine a 57 year-old bike messenger in keds lugging his turntable out to the rooftop party? Believe me, if you are unlucky enough to be in this space when that occurs, you will wish for its destruction.

You betcha'!

To all of you Palin fans out there, I will point out one thing to you: She winked at you. During a debate. Winked!

Several times. And, to the best of my knowledge, there was nothing in her eye. Except perhaps a tear for all the special-needs kids out there.

The last time a "wink" was contrived without intentional irony on national television was probably during some episode of Diff'rent Strokes in 1987. It's the kind of behavior that if you did in a bar, people would question your sanity; If done in a Miss Teen USA, it would probably get polite applause.

But would you buy a car from someone who winked at you? Would you hire an employee if they winked at you? Would you want a grown adult winking at you as a main component of trying to convince you of the righteousness of their opinion?

"Infantile" is the only word sufficient to convey how our politicians now treat us.

And honestly, who can blame them.


"More than ever on the campaign trail, the candidates are dropping their G's. Hardworkin' families are strainin' and tryin'a get ahead. It's not only Sarah Palin but McCain, too, occasionally Mr. Obama, and, of course, George W. Bush when he darts out like the bird in a cuckoo clock to tell us we are in crisis. All of the candidates say "mom and dad": "our moms and dads who are struggling." This is Mr. Bush's former communications adviser Karen Hughes's contribution to our democratic life, that you cannot speak like an adult in politics now, that's too austere and detached, snobby. No one can say mothers and fathers, it's all now the faux down-home, patronizing—and infantilizing—moms and dads. Do politicians ever remember that in a nation obsessed with politics, our children—sorry, our kids—look to political figures for a model as to how adults sound?"
-Peggy Noonan