k.d. lang and The Reclines do a great cover of Johnny Get Angry and I think it’s the opener to the second set for the Diebold Blitzkreig. If any of y’all see me huntin’ down girls anytime soon, I just want you to know I’m only engaging in a talent hunt (nudge nudge wink wink) for someone to front the band. It’s cool. Back off man.

My own personal VP pick for Obama is Al Gore with the global warming portfolio, since it will take intensive international cooperation. He’s a Nobel Winner and he’s certainly prepared after a former 8 year stint to take it on. I think he’d approach it with zeal for the reason that he would have a world premier platform to work on the issue. I do not think Hillary is a good choice, nor any other woman. One black man is enough novelty for America in 2008, I’m thinking. I think Edwards as Attorney General and I think he would relish that role and clean up the Dept. of Justice and alter the trajectory of our judiciary. I would offer Hillary the Health and Human Services Cabinet Job if she wanted it. I would keep Gates and Patraeus because it should be their burden to clean up in Iraq and it would signal a “bipartisan” foreign policy that is a real shift to the center. I might even bring back Colin Powell and rehabilitate him as SecDef instead of keeping Gates, but I want to sleep on that pick. For health reasons, President Clinton will take a lower profile as Ambassador to lower Paraguay. Or, maybe Yemen. Or maybe even Madagascar. Mali maybe. Wes Clark as global info high muckety muck, whatever they call Homeland Security these days. I might even form an entire “shadow government” as they sometimes do in England and other parliamentary countries. For the FDA, NOAA and NASA as well as NIH, a bunch of those science based agencies would go to the very best I could find in their fields without respect to politics. Parts of the government have become unprofessional in my opinion and that must need strong remedy. The reality check needs to bounce on the GOP where science no longer depends on superstition and economics is no longer wishful thinking. So MUCH needs to be done!

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Sorry, I just haven’t had anything I was burning up to write about. I missed my grandchild’s birthday in the hubbub of my trip to see Jack, but I’ll make up for it tomorrow. Please, Rebecca, blame it on my Oldtimer’s and not the fact that I’m a bad Gramp-A-Long.

I thought this tune could close the first set of my new band, Diebold Blitzkreig. You don’t know a good looker like this one who could front a band, do you?

As many of you know, I just returned from a several day tour of the Old Confederacy.

I took Mom to her sister’s place in Biloxi, MS, dropped her off and then went on to New Orleans to visit my son, Jack.

I had a very good time.

I’m always surprised when I go Southeast to remember just how beatiful the South remains. Yes, yes, there’s a lot of urban sprawl and stupid franchises and blah blah blah, but, in the main, there are huge swaths of territory covered in very large trees, rolling hills, lakes and rivers.

It was a lot easier to appreciate the beauty when the weather is so nice — 75 degrees and a slight breeze. Later on, when it’s 80 and the humidity is 90, it will be much more difficult to come back with such a rosy report.

New Orleans surprised me. There are large areas that haven’t been touched since Katrina, still devastated and still abandoned. There are other areas where houses have been redone and the community is vibrant.

Jack took me mostly into an area called the Triangle or the Marigny Triangle, which is near the French Quarter. It’s a very happening neighborhood with restaurants, diners, music venues and out of sight of the tourists. I ate a great deal of shellfish with Cajun seasoning. We went to a little park that was having a neighborhood arts and crafts festival and a local garage band played as young couples pushed the strollers around the one-square block of trees and grass.

Even though I spent two days with Jack, I’m already missing him. As Harry Connick Jr. sings: Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans?

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My daughter sends this video of George in the Circle Dance at school. GK is the one leaning out to show off her smile. Too cute.

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As you know, I want to form a band called Diebold Blitzkreig. The play list so far includes the Ramone’s “Blitzkreig Bop” and the Stones’ “Sympathy For the Devil”. The video below is the third on the list, “Bad to the Bone” by George T and the Destroyers. Looking over the playlist, I’m now trying to drum up a percussionist.

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A wise and funny man and my friend. Loved you, Phil. Sorry to see you go. I know this tune would have pleased you.

Today is Mother’s Day. I have a card and a modest present for my mother and we’ll have lunch later this afternoon.

Friday, I went to the funeral of a mother of my friend, Suz.

I do family law. Almost all of my files are filled with the good and bad of mothers.

We do not get the mothers we want and deserve anymore than they get the children they long for.

One of my present cases involves a mother with felony convictions for child abuse and neglect.

We look for our soulmates — we look for the perfect person with whom to plight our troth (marry). Perfect people don’t exist.

Neither do perfect mothers.

Our mothers are human, and therefore flawed.

They make decisions on the fly and in the midst of pressures of their own that we cannot comprehend as children.

Then, we remember that we don’t like those decisions and hold those grudges for the rest of our lives.

We mix up our notions of the perfect, nuturing, loving storybook creatures of archetype with the real, working people who get tired and angry and confused and stressed out.

Sometimes we throw in our self loathing or our culturally inspired misogyny.

We expect our mothers to forgive us everything while we feel self righteous about forgiving nothing.

Except for this day, when we gin up all our Hollywood inspired expectations and gush over them in embarrassing ways.

My own mother is such a remarkable woman. Flawed, yes, but a magnificent woman nevertheless.

I am so grateful for her still-sharp mind and tireless health.

I’ve finally become enough of a grown up and less of a child around her to appreciate her.

Yes, I love my Mom, but I think it’s all the more important that she’s my friend. We’ve found a way to disagree as friends do and to forgive as friends do. It’s a priceless part of my life.

My children have their mother and today’s her day and not mine for them. Their mother is no longer my wife, but she will always be their mother. God bless her. I hope my children know that their mother loves them. I can say that with no qualifications and I know it’s true in the deepness of my heart and all the way down to the bones. My ex-wife is also a magnificent woman, flawed as she may be. While raising our children, we made our share of less than perfect decisions, but the proof is in the pudding and we raised two wonderful adults. I pray my children honor their mother today and feel sure that they will and do.

Men often have the luxury of growing older, but not growing up. Mothers, on the other hand, have very little choice but to grow up when that flopping piece of bloody protoplasm is dumped on their sheeted bellies in the delivery room. God did well to hardwire mothers to love those needy little bastards, or we’d kill and eat them before slogging through their adolescence.

And, so, children, if your mother allowed you to live to this good day, pick up the freakin’ phone and give the bitch a call. No matter that she stole your childhood and made you clean your room and stopped you from wearing that god-awful outfit to school. For just one day put aside the fact that she was right all along about your wretched first spouse. Temper your fury at being made to wait until the advanced age of 16 to have your first car date with mercy and forgiveness that comes with the experience of having your own oppositional and rude child.

And, remember, we do this in the name of Hallmark and the American Restaurant Association.

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With apologies to the inestimable Monty Python, at least one pundit sees the Hillary campaign as having joined the “bleedin’ choir invisible.” Maybe she’s just stunned.

One of my all-time favorite comedy bits, here’s the Python original classic for the nostalgic.

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The Washington Post throws a particular cliche under the bus.

Good riddance.

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P.S. Happy Birthday, Middle Sister, happy birthday 2 UUUUU.