Hammer Mill Days

Damn it, tubey! Get your roots off my neck! This bloody floor is covered with glass shards and god knows what else. Let me up, will you? Good goddamn thing for PDAs, otherwise there'd be no way in hell I could post this week. Freaking hell, were under siege here in The Straw Horse , a local public house we stumbled into last week. Oh, sure.... I know what you're going to say. " Joe ," you'll tell me, "aren't you guys just a little old for barroom brawls?" And the answer to that is, of course, yes. But before you ask a follow-up, let me just explain that this brawl was a.) not my idea, b.) the result of circumstances entirely beyond my control, and c.) started by Marvin (my personal robot assistant) in an uncharacteristic fit of passion. Whoa, hold on... can't type... here comes another bottle... Fuck, that was close. Sorry for the interruption. Where was I? Ah, yes. Marvin. Of course, as you remember (just scroll down to last week's column), ...

Yes, so perhaps you've heard... we're going to have another new governor here in New York. More than a bit flabbergasting, I must admit. With the coincidence of daylight savings time starting last Sunday, I kept wondering all week if I were merely sleepwalking and that things would be less bizarre when I finally came to, but no... this was the week that was. You've heard way too much about the Spitzer thing, I'm sure, and I will not add any weight to that burden other than to briefly visit one event that took place last weekend. It was the annual Gridiron dinner, a "press yucks it up with the President" type of affair. Bush was there, singing a clumsily satirical version of "The Green, Green Grass of Home" (penned by someone on the public payroll, no doubt) in which he made light of some of his administration's most monumental failings, from the circumstances surrounding the deliberate distortion of intelligence in the lead-up to the Iraq war, to...