Wry On The Rocks

President Obama’s garden beer hour to teach racial tolerance to Sgt. Crowley this week went well right up until the end.  Unfortunately Louis Gates took the concept of kissing and making up all too literally.  It seems that after the affair in the garden was over, Gates attempted another affair when he hit on Sgt. Crowley in the parking lot.  Rebuffed by the officer, Gates immediately convinced Obama to book another beer get-together scheduled for next week; teaching homophobia tolerance to straight cops. 

Now if Sgt. Crowley would only show up in a tee shirt bearing the message that “plovers taste just like chicken!” he might find a permanent place at the White House picnic table.

Mexico City has just announced free ambulance and emergency room service for tourists who are concerned about contracting swine flu while visiting the capital city.  Unfortunately, they will not include an armed platoon of AK-47 equipped militia to get you to the hospital before the drug cartel finds you out.  Am I the only one avoiding a vacation in Mexico because of the carnage in the streets?  Somehow, swine flu would not be in my top 10 list of why I’m avoiding our friends to the south.

Unfortunately, Cambridge police officer Sgt. James Crowley has agreed to meet with President Obama and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. to “have a couple of beers” at the White House.  This has to be one of the most tricked up events of Obama’s tenure so far.  A kumbaya beer party at the White House?  Just a few guys having a couple of beers together?? Give me a fucking break!  Obama made the mistake of speaking without a teleprompter…said something dumb and offensive without any facts…nothing new there…and now Sgt. Crowley is going to let him turn it into a positive spin?  The best that can come out of this is Obama exclaiming that he only wants to drink American beer…Budweiser!  Shouldn’t someone tell him….hello Jim Koch of Sam Adams beer…that Budweiser is now owned by a Belgium company??  I guess that factoid wasn’t on his teleprompter this week.  Then there’s poor old Al Sharpton, who was headed to Kennedy airport for Cambridge when he heard the news.  “What happened to the good old racists?” he was heard to bemoan the reporters who still bother to listen to him.  If Obama keeps making nice, nice with everybody, Al and Jesse are going to need a stimulus plan of their own.

There is bad news coming from the art world these days; plastic is not the durable material once thought.  Antique plastic dolls at the National Museum of Denmark have begun to break down and peel and the first plastic toothbrush owned by the Smithsonian has all but disintegrated.

Because many of the 20th century artists worked with plastic like cellulose nitrate, their works are in danger of also disintegrating in time.  Insurance companies, alerted to the situation, are warning art galleries and collectors about the potential dangers of purchasing such works. 

However, there is good news about the limited duration of the medium.  Most of Jeff Koons work is in plastic!

The New York Stock Exchange today announced that you can now lose your money much faster than before.  The Exchange customers can “now see trades executed within five milliseconds compared to 103 milliseconds previously.”  This is an effort to improve their position in the competitive world of trading firms and bolster their image.

I have an idea to improve their image:  how about not referring to stock transactions as executions !