President Barack Obama

The next few weeks are going to be full of exclamations and extravagant cheer (as the past few hours have been), but it's truly been the kind of great day that history books just aren't going to be able to fathom. Someday it will just be a matter of fact that Barack Obama was the first (of no doubt several) African-American Presidents. There will be colorful sketches of our President-elect (probably standing, smiling with his arms crossed) that will come in educational packets along with the visages of Martin Luther King, Harriet Tubman, Booker T. Washington, and others. Kids will simply memorize that he was the first black president like they know that George Washington was the first white president. It won't seem surprising or even unusual that a guy named Barack Hussein Obama Jr. was elected president in a landslide. In time, the radical emotions we're feeling now are going to be replaced with blase acknowledgment. But this is a good thing. I'd rather our society be one in which it is accepted as a given that a black man can be president, than live in this euphoric bubble for the rest of history.

I remember starting a discussion in 2003 with some friends at Penn's dining hall about who would be the first person of "minority" status to break the Christian white man streak. Would it be a woman (not technically a minority), a Jewish American, an African-American, a Latino-American, an Asian-American, or other. Ultimately the consensus was that it couldn't be someone of predominantly Hispanic descent because of tension over Mexican immigration, and it wasn't likely to be an Asian person due to the relatively small portion of the population they represent. A practicing Muslim certainly seemed out of the question at that point. Joe Lieberman had almost been a heartbeat away from the Presidency only three years before, but even so, the conservative Christians didn't seem likely to go for a Jewish commander-in-chief, and Jews only make up about 1% of the US population. So we figured the safe bet would be a woman (there had been female executives in other countries, after all), or if the President died, his/her Jewish Vice President. Even five years ago, a black president seemed like something to strive toward in 2020 or 2024. I'm so rarely glad to be wrong.

In our defense, we couldn't have seen a candidate like Barack Obama coming from a mile away. Joe Biden famously gaffed when he called Obama an African-American candidate who is "articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy" but after the shock wears off, you get what he's saying. I don't think "clean" is meant to suggest an opposition to a supposed group of average, less-hygenic African-Americans. I think it's a contrast to politicians, who are known for being corrupt and for having sex scandal skeletons lurking in their closets. You know, dirty. And "articulate and bright" could draw a comparison to some current presidents. As for"nice-looking," well, Obama's handsome probably by most standards. And let's face it, as far as the personal histories of politicians go, Obama was squeaky. If Ayers, Rezko, and Wright are the worst characters they can associate with you, you know you're virtually bulletproof.

There are so many things I'm looking forward to during the Obama Presidency, but maybe most of all I'm looking foward to his Supreme Court appointments. Finally, 88-year-old liberal Justice Stevens can retire in peace, knowing that his seat won't be given to a right-wing idealogue. 75-year-old Ruth Bader Ginsburg is probably feeling the same way. Even Stephen Breyer and David Souter, hovering on either side of 70, might want to consider calling it a career. How great would it be to get three or four fresh liberal faces on that court after such a long haul? I almost suspect that Howard Dean and Dick Gephardt have been carrying Stevens around Weekend-At-Bernie's style just to keep his seat out of Bush's hands.

And on top of it all, what a week to be a Philadelphian Democrat. Jeremiah Wright is going to have to change the punctuation and emphasis of his now-famous chant to, "God damn, America."

I'm sure things won't turn around overnight, but I'm more optimistic about our country's future than I've been in a long, long time.

I love love

WE'RE CARVING A PUMPKIN! IT'S SO ADORABLE!

Brett Favre

Headline from the front page of NYTimes.com:

Here Goes Nothing
Brett Favre, freethinking huckleberry in the N.F.L., tries to make something happen one last time.

What does "freethinking huckleberry" mean in this context?

Also, exciting about the Phillies, eh? I rarely wish I was back in Philadelphia, but that would have been pretty sweet to take part of. Has Ryan Howard ever run faster in his entire career than when he was the first to tackle Brad Lidge and Carlos Ruiz?

"But surely a black man couldn’t become president of the United States?"

I'd like to think of this recent NYTimes Op-Ed Column discussion as a bookend with DMX's prior interview with XXL magazine:

Rebranding the U.S. with Obama

By Nicholas D. Kristof

The other day I had a conversation with a Beijing friend and I mentioned that Barack Obama was leading in the presidential race:

She: Obama? But he’s the black man, isn’t he?

Me: Yes, exactly.

She: But surely a black man couldn’t become president of the United States?

Me: It looks as if he’ll be elected.

She: But president? That’s such an important job! In America, I thought blacks were janitors and laborers.

Me: No, blacks have all kinds of jobs.

She: What do white people think about that, about getting a black president? Are they upset? Are they angry?

Me: No, of course not! If Obama is elected, it’ll be because white people voted for him.

[Long pause.]

She: Really? Unbelievable! What an amazing country!

***

Kristof then rationalizes his friend's perspective by reminding us "that the one thing countless millions of people around the world 'know' about the United States is that it is controlled by a cabal of white bankers and Jews who use police with fire hoses to repress blacks. To them, Mr. Obama’s rise triggers severe cognitive dissonance."

So they're familiar with the Civil Rights struggles of the 1960s (even if some details regarding Jewish involvement are off) but they haven't heard of the great successes of African-Americans over the past forty years? What an oddly selective memory. The ascendancy of Oprah alone would be hard to miss, I would think.

CB I Hate Perfume

I've been wearing CB I Hate Perfume for months now and I love it more than I ever expected to. I never really enjoyed perfume before (not to mention that my profession frowns on it) but what I wasn't enjoying was the headache inducing, synthetic smelling scents. The perfumer, Christopher Brosius, sums it up far better than I ever could in his manifesto explaining why he hates perfume.
They're very unusual scents, my favorite is called Winter, 1972, and it's described as a field of untouched new fallen snow, hand knit woolen mittens covered with frost, a hint of frozen forest & sleeping earth. It smells exactly like that. I would never have imagined I'd want to smell like cold dirt but I do. I love it. They're very personal, intimate scents; they don't accost everyone around you and leave headaches in their wake. And there is certainly something for everyone, the scents range from the smell of tomato vines (another favorite) to the absolutely spot on scent of burning maple leaves.
If there weren't enough reasons for me to love this line already, he has a scent called In The Library. Described as English Novel taken from a Signed First Edition of one of my very favorite novels, Russian & Moroccan leather bindings, worn cloth and a hint of wood polish, it is very nearly the scent I've been looking for. Unfortunately, it's slightly too sweet for me, more vanilla and pipe tobacco. Having experienced so many of Christopher Brosius's scents and finding almost all of them very accurate I can only imagine that that favorite novel of his smells like that. His gallery in Brooklyn sells many more accords (single note fragrances) than the website and among them is one called English Novel. I can only hope that a trip back East is in the works for me so I can stop by and smell what is possibly the scent of my dreams. Of course, if I should be feeling particularly flush anytime soon (or not so soon) he does custom scents.
HOWEVER, (this is surely a novel by now) the real reason I need you all to know about this line is that I think everyone would love it but not enough people are familar with it. This fact was confirmed by me when I did a Facebook search to see how many people had it listed on their page and the answer came back as two; me and the perfumer himself.

Less Cowbell Please

Come on Rays, that sketch aired almost a decade ago. It's like the team is owned by Michael Scott.

My Quest

It has become my personal mission to find a perfume that smells like books. I've been trying everything people tell me (and by people, I mean internet reviews) smells like paper and it's been very frustrating. Apparently, I am the only one with this desire.



I'll keep you all posted since I know you're just chomping at the bit to see how this works out.