It is a great morning in America.

We are going to either elect an awesome black man or a guy who has 'Nam flashbacks and chose a hippie woman married to an Eskimo to be his VP.

Dexter is officially walking! We can no longer call him The Baby, but must refer to him by his new title, Toddler. It is still that Chimp On His Hind Legs gait, but I have not seen him crawl at all yet today. Leading up to this, there has still been some crawling when he wanted to get somewhere faster, but so far, only proudly walking.

Sisyphus

It's finally finished! My entry to Julie Pittman and Jeremy Rosenberg's One Minute Film Festival being held at the Echo Park Film Center in September. The resolution for YouTube isn't as nice as the actual film, but you can get the idea.

The whole John "just call him Newt Gingrich" Edwards thing makes me sad and mad. The detail I just can't get over is the woman's reported paycheck for making 4, count 'em, four, webisodes.

$100,000.

That's a budget of $25,000 per webisode, one of which was 2 1/2 minutes. For her salary, not the actual budget. Supposedly shot documentary style over the course of a few months. And she had never done anything else as a videographer before. Nice work if you can get it.

Perhaps this was the budget for the whole project. Who is she paying? Camera, sound and an editor? Equipment and travel? I could see it getting to be that kind of dough, perhaps...or maybe a way to put his mistress on the payroll.

I love the Right Tool for the Right Job. I had a goal today, and got it done!!!

A few weeks ago I bought Dexter a new little wading pool, a step up from what we had before. This one has higher sides, a cushy bottom and was so much more pool for $15. It also required MUCH more inflating, and after a few evening sitting around blowing it up while watching tv, and getting nowhere, I realized I would need More Power.

Ben has a compressor and was very happy to let me use it, but I needed a specialty nozzle. Today was the day, so Dex, Ben and I set out for some hardware store way out in the valley that is a favorite of Ben, Helen, and the rest of the guys on their crews. It was so worth the trip! I was not all made in China either. In addition to my five nozzle set, I also picked up a mini anvil from India, and scored some work gloves made in Pakistan. Ben is very concerned about the environment, but not so much about global trade. I would have preferred to buy American, but I came home with 2 bags of tools and supplies for $50. And we car pooled. And shopped not at a big box store.

While Dex was napping, I dragged out the mildly inflated pool carcass, and hooked up the compressor. In ten minutes, I had a camera ready, fully inflated pool! There was much strutting around the backyard by me. It is THAT awesome.

The members of the Swolen Monkey Showcase comedy group at Emerson College circa 1991. The photo is inspired by the album cover art of The Go-Go's second album, which I can't even remember the name of anymore, but it was the one where they were in towels with face cream.

I'm trying to post this photo to the Swolen Monkey Facebook page and it keeps posting upside down. I had to scan the photo upside down because it of the scanner lid and it's position in my college yearbook. Short of removing the lid or slicing the photo out if the book, I thought perhaps the editing software provided by HP would be good enough to rotate the photo and save. HP blames Facebook for only uploading the original file and not my saved edit, which makes no sense. What makes more sense to me would be encrypting HP software. Either way, pretty pretty Blogger lets me upload it correctly, so I know it can be done.

Lisa told me about the greatest bachelorette party idea ever, being hosted tonight by none other than our friend Beckers. The party is on a Monday night because the bride-to-be is a make-up artist for "Wicked," which is currently enjoying an extended run here in LA at the Pantages.

Everyone invited is creative professionally, either working on the show as crew and cast, or like Lisa and Beckers, live in LA and work in entertainment.

The party theme is Nude Artist Model. That's right, figure drawing class with some young hottie friend of Beckers as the model, with booze and food. And cackling ladies. 8 am figure drawing class in an icy cold art room in snowy Boston would have been mightily improved with margaritas, an 8pm start time and the sultry summer heat!