The new joke: How many cops does it take to arrest lemonade vendors?

Admittedly, these protestors are illegally selling lemonade (without vodka!) on the U.S. Capitol lawn.

The horror!

The protest is to show that while they knew they were wrong, the police overstepped their bounds several times. It’s now documented.

It also shows how ridiculous it is for little kids’ lemonade stands to get shut down.

But as far as the protest goes, wasn’t it cut and dry? Why didn’t the police arrest the lemonade salespeople as soon as money was transacted.

Silly, silly, silly.

And by the way, don’t touch my camera!

More about the video below the jump.

The Pony Bar + NYC + Good Friends + You

On Saturday Night, Tina and I met regular-reader Luis V. and his lovely better-half Becky at one of the best bars in all of NYC, called The Pony Bar.

Pony Bar has the best beers at the best prices in the city, and now I can say they have the best Lamb Sliders I’ve ever eaten. I never ate a lamb slider before Saturday night, so that helps the hyperbole a little.

All beers (from what I ordered and can tell) cost $5. Every single one is a top-tier brew. And if they aren’t, I like to think they are. And it’s fun to look at the alcohol content and serving size before making your order. At first glance, the alcohol content looks like the pricetag.

Every 30 minutes to an hour, there’s a loud knocking noise (Luis, correct me if I’m wrong) followed by everyone in the bar screaming, “NEW BEER!!” At which time, they take a beer listing down and replace it with another.

Then a leprechaun flips through the bar before landing head first in a cauldron of gold coins.

Again, Luis, correct me if I’m wrong about any of these details.

The bar tenders clean each glass just before serving you with a squirt of some special holy water. And they understand the art of the pour better than most anyone I know apart from regular-reader SAW. I had a glass of Left Hand Milk Stout that was poured so well, I wanted to hug the bartender.

Our reunion was great. You might remember that Luis and Becky met us in Washington DC for the Jon Stewart Pep Rally Rally for Sanity. Luis and Becky are intimidatingly smart, but so down to earth that you’d never know it.

Tina jokes that Luis and my first date was at The Pony Bar, and we were out to relive memories on Saturday night.

We had a rip-roaring time. Luis wore his “Intelligent Design makes my monkey sad” tee-shirt. And I actually had an evolution shirt on under my shirt. It’s kind of like this one.

Tina loves Becky so much I told them they should get a room before the night was over. They are a good pair. And Luis and I talked shop, blog topics, blog regulars, and photography.

There is never enough time in the day when meeting with good, smart people such as these.

Here’s a couple shots below. Click to enlarge. One is a dark image of my lamb sliders and ‘tater chips. Another hipstamatic shot of the bartender changing out a beer selection. And there’s a general shot of the bar at its emptiest all night.

Ex-girlfriend explosion

Image via Wikipedia

I forgot that I wanted to write yesterday that my trip to Cleveland was an ex-girlfriend reminder explosion.

I dated a girl in college who was from Cleveland. I visited there a couple times while we dated. I’ve been to the Rock and Roll Hall of fame only because I liked someone from where it exists. Otherwise, who goes out of their way to go there?

Even as a music lover, I didn’t find it all that interesting.

At midnight, I went out to the parking lot of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, dosed an old photo album of her photos with gasoline and flicked a half finished cigar onto it.

It burned like Jimi Hendrix’s guitar.

And my return flight to Chicago was run by Colgan Air. When my ex-girlfriend from high school/some of college dumped me, she met a guy in Paris on a missions trip whom god told her she would marry.

God told her this.

God.

He spoke.

Are you reading the words I’m writing?

God told someone to marry someone else.

One hundred per cent bullshit.

This kid’s last name, whom god told my girlfriend to marry, was Colgan and his family owns and operates an airline out of Washington DC. This Colgan boy would jump on flights down to NC to spend time with my ex-gee-eff.

This was the girlfriend who leaped headfirst off the high dive into the crazy pool for Jesus. When we met, she was the coolest person I ever knew. She was super intelligent. She was really involved in secular activities. She volunteered her time with dying children. She traveled the world. She danced. She rode horses.

And then I came along. I was poor. I played in a band. And all I could give her was Christ. It took a couple years, but once she prayed that prayer, it was downhill.

Her coolness deflated and all she wanted to do was live to the tune of god’s voice in her little noggin. When she went nuts for Christ, I was able to examine how ridiculous religion could be. While it didn’t start the doubts I already had, it definitely allowed me to see things from different perspectives.

My parents always taught us that there were forms of Christianity that weren’t necessarily correct in their worship methods. That girlfriend ended up worshiping in ways that the lesser Christians worshiped.

When I realized how ridiculous it was to think that one Christian is superior over the next, it was like Red Bull … it gave me wings … and now I’m free as a bird of all that circular reasoning.

Free as a bird … Like Free Bird …

ROCK and ROLL!

I hate everything about the end of this post, but I’m going to leave it … because it’s sooooo campy.

Post Mortem: Rally for Sanity

Saturday was the Rally for Sanity and/or Fear, in case you forgot. I have footage of the rally. I haven’t had a chance to do anything with it yet.

What you might not hear or read about the rally is what it was like to be a part of the crowd.

Tina, regular-reader Luis V., his girlfriend Becky (or Debbie) and I stood in the middle of 7th Street. I denoted where that is on the photo above.

We hoped to have been with a larger group of other non-theists, but coordinating the timing proved much harder than we all anticipated. Not one of us predicted the amount of people at the event.

Looking at it now, we were far from the stage. If you can tell, 7th street runs right through the mall. Unfortunately, every time an ambulance wanted to use the street to pass through, it took a mesmerizingly long time. We’d see one coming from 50 feet away, and we’d say, “Fuck, here comes another one.” Ten minutes later, it would pass us.

Everyone around us would push together and then split apart to make room for the vehicle (or vehicles), much like what the Red Sea in a dumb old cliché.

The other irritating part about being in a street, there was a constant flow of people trying to go from the left to the right or the right to the left side of the mall. This pissed us off at times. Instead of staying where they were, people thought they could see better if they went to the other side of the HUMONGOUS crowd.

***

But no one lost their temper. No one got upset … for the most part. We all grinned, bore it, and enjoyed what we could.

Here’s what I think separated us from the rest of the animal kingdom. No one broke and blew hot angry coals of miserable fire everywhere. No one lost their marbles and said, “Fuck you, I need my space.”

We were hot, hungry and faint. We couldn’t hear a damn thing coming from the stage. Once in a while, one of us would hear something and relay it to the rest of the crowd. Or one of us would say, “Hey, R2D2 is on stage. Isn’t that cute.”

At one point, I wanted to make a “Life of Brian” joke, “Blessed are the cheese makers? What’s so special about the cheese makers?” But I held my tongue for some reason. But in my fantasy, it would have been hilarious.

We were jammed up against each other. At one point, I said, “I think I might be pregnant.” It got a raunchy laugh from our local vicinity of new “friends.”

At another point, Tina introduced herself to the guy behind her. He was pushing his “belly” up against her, and she kind of felt violated if she didn’t at least know the guy’s name giving her a slick willy up against her ass.

***

About an hour and a half in, I looked at Tina’s face, and she was about to lose it. She felt claustrophobic and lightheaded. She tried to keep it together, but with each person pushing against her or each group pushing through to the other side, she felt more nauseous. Once she announced that she wasn’t feeling well, everyone around her showed compassion. They offered her a little more space, and different people kept asking if she was okay. One guy’s concern really touched me, and I felt very appreciative that in the event that I would need to carry her out, these guys all had my back.

I’m not saying it separated us from the Tea Party rallies. If they had anything going for them, they had the luxury of space around them. Those of us rallying for sanity had no such luxuries.

After the event ended, Luis, Becky, Tina and I stuck around and watched the crowds’ massive exodus. We took pictures and tried to soak in the event we just witnessed. We were also hoping for cell signal to return, because all 215,000 of us had shut down the cellular network and even blew up one of the cellular satellites, and we needed access to facebook to find out where the secular group was meeting. We finally started walking away, and didn’t get a signal for about a mile and a half.

Once we got to the restaurant meeting place, the atheists were all seated on two floors of a huge restaurant. There was no more room left, so Luis, Becky, Tina and I left and grabbed a seat at another restaurant. We were all so exhausted and tipsy after dinner, we parted ways and headed back to our hotels.

When I woke up the next day, Becky was with me and Tina was with Luis. I’m not sure how that happened.

Honk.

***

I would definitely do something like it again. I would drive the distance. I would spend the money. I feel that I supported and experienced something relatively worthwhile. I stick to my guns. I loved the video I posted showing how dumb people are. That’s how I see the world in general. We all need to educate ourselves. We also need to avoid cameras for the most part. I have footage of Tina and I talking about the event, and I won’t post it, because I don’t want it up. I’m too critical of it.

We should all be critically minded people striving for what’s best in the world.

We should all strive for sanity.

 

 

 

Hell yes! New Left Media takes the Rally for Sanity

You know I love this group who have been descending on the idiocy of rallies for the last couple years. This time, New Left Media takes the idiocy at the Rally for Sanity.

I LOVE IT!

If you’re going to be on camera, please know what the fuck you’re talking about. Otherwise, politely decline. You don’t have to be interviewed by anyone if you don’t want to be.

Don’t forget what Mark Twain supposedly said, “”It’s better to remain silent and be thought a fool than open one’s mouth and remove all doubt.”

From New Left Media:

On October 30, 2010, thousands of people gathered in the National Mall for the “Rally to Restore Sanity” called for by Jon Stewart on his show.

While participants attended for a variety of reasons, many of them raised concerns about the deteriorating state of news media, especially the hyperbolic and hyperpartisan content of 24/7 cable news networks.

Many of those who expressed concerns nonetheless cited partisan news outlets as their primary source for news, while others cited The Daily Show, something Mr. Stewart has discouraged.

Not a single participant listed their regional newspaper as a source for news, and it was telling that the majority of the people we spoke to were unaware of the details of the elections in their congressional districts (this despite many of them having already voted.)

If an intention of the “Rally to Restore Sanity” was to dissuade people from voicing divisive and paranoid political accusations, it was not enough to deter the fringe. In lieu of the Birthers common at Tea Party events, there was a small presence of 9/11 Truthers who accused the Bush administration of orchestrating the 9/11 attacks. (Doubtless, these flimsy conspiracy theorists will infest the comment threads in needless defense.)

But for the most part, the rally represented a congenial gathering of center to center-left people who are opposed to ideological purity tests and uncompromising dogmas, and who focused their blame on the divisive media coverage of political issues.

This NEW LEFT MEDIA film was produced and edited by Chase Whiteside (interviewer) and Erick Stoll (camera operator). Additional camera by Zac Sleeth.

Rally Weekend!

Tina and I shot all day at a House Beautiful magazine event downtown. Our dogs are barking. We probably walked a few miles to get to and from different locations.

It was a lot of fun, though. It’s always cool to be surrounded by designers and high-end home furnishings that you or I may never be able to afford.

Tomorrow we’re leaving for Washington D.C. We decided to drive. It’ll give us some getting to know each other time, since we’re not already around each other 24/7.

We can’t wait to meet up with our favorite non-believers. It kind of surprises me that I feel like I know some of these people so well, but I’ve only met a couple of them face to face. Wait, I think I’ve only met Luis V. face to face.

I’ve only seen the other ones during Internet chats.

Anyway, I’ll be updating as much as I can from the road. So make sure you stop by and see what we’re up to.

Cheers.

Update-a-loo

Things are nutballs around Le Café. Tina and I have been squaring away our itinerary for our road trip to Washington DC for the Restore Sanity rally.

We’re planning on meeting up with some of our favorite atheists. We’ve met Luis V. before in his stomping grounds of NYC. And we’re looking forward to hooking up with Julie from Attempts at Rational Behavior and her husband as well as another guy Brian, who runs drinking skeptically groups both digitally and real life versions.

There will be plenty of other folks out in DC who I’ve met online, and look forward to seeing in real life.

Of course I’ll be there with cameras in hand, both still and video, to document the whole shebang.

Tina and I bought a new/used car on Monday. It’s a Honda CR-V. Our Jetta had been giving us trouble for about 2 years, and we finally traded in. The CR-V is a sweet ride. It’s perfect for Tina toting around clients and for us to tote around Talulah.

We’d love to see more of you out in DC, so make your plans and meet us there. You’ll be able to find us. Just follow the incessant honking.

HONK.

 

Keep Fear Alive Rally | 10.30.2010

I want to go to the March to Keep Fear Alive in Washington, D.C. at the end of the month. Anyone else want to go?

America, the Greatest Country God ever gave Man, was built on three bedrock principles: Freedom. Liberty. And Fear — that someone might take our Freedom and Liberty. But now, there are dark, optimistic forces trying to take away our Fear — forces with salt and pepper hair and way more Emmys than they need. They want to replace our Fear with reason. But never forget — “Reason” is just one letter away from “Treason.” Coincidence? Reasonable people would say it is, but America can’t afford to take that chance.

So join The Rev. Sir Dr. Stephen T. Colbert, D.F.A. on October 30th for the “March to Keep Fear Alive“™ in Washington DC. Pack an overnight bag with five extra sets of underwear — you’re going to need them. Because, to Restore Truthiness we must always… Shh!!! What’s that sound?! I think there’s someone behind you! Run!

Watch Stephen give the marching orders on The Colbert Report. Keep checking back for updates and march information.

Download the official Keep Fear Alive logo.