The Week in Review

Ike Turner died this week. (More on this in my blog posting from earlier today for my take on this).

It looks like Barry Bonds' reign as the face of steroid use in Major League Baseball is about to be shared with a whole bunch of other faces . . . and many of them - no, make that most of them - aren't black. But it's usually the black dude who gets singled out.

Mitt Romey said in an interview with Matt Lauer on the Today show about attacks on his religion, "It's not the American way." I haven't heard anything so asinine since Ronald Reagan naively stated that growing up in Dixon, Illinois, he wasn't aware there was a race problem. Discrimination of all kinds is the American way, and everybody knows it. As for the discrimiation against blacks and women that exists within Romney's own Church of Latter Day Saints (the proper name for Mormonism) . . . I won't even go there.

Barack Obama's past drug use has been brought to the forefront by the desperate people behind Hillary Clinton's campaign (which as everyone knows can no longer claim "frontrunner" status because of all those white folks in Iowa who are putting on a liberal front and saying they will vote for Obama - yeah, right). Their little scheme blew up in their faces, culminating in Hillary's apology to Barack and the resignation of the staffer who brought it up. Personally, I always thought Barack did the right thing by admitting it early in the race and getting it out of the way (unlike the present occupant of the White House, who hoped his arrest for drunk driving wouldn't come out.) It made a lot more sense to me to be frank rather than to try to skirt the issue, like Bill Clinton's ridiculous 1992 claim that "I didn't inhale."

I've got to finish my holiday shopping this weekend and get gift cards and packages in the mail by Tuesday. I've also got galleys to read over for Once Upon a Project this weekend. I'm thrilled that they arrived this week; I should be able to get through them before we leave for vacation next Saturday. The behemoth of a story was typeset at 371 pages in trade paper size. The more I look at it, the more excited I get. It's good, y'all. Incidentally, Amazon now has the cover art on its page. Plus they're discounting it to $11.20. Add it to your list of books, spend at least $25 and get free shipping. To preorder click here.

Turner Classic Movies will be showing four or five Errol Flynn movies Saturday night into the wee hours of Sunday morning. I don't know what all the fuss was about Clark Gable being so handsome. In my opinion, Errol Flynn was the best-looking male actor of his era . . . at least he was before the effects too much alcohol and a late-blooming morphine addiction became apparent. Errol Flynn lived through an illness that damaged his heart in his youth, and he died prematurely in 1959, just five months after his 50th birthday (that's roughly my age right now). His busy love life inspired the expression "In Like Flynn," and he wanted to call his autobiography In Like Me, but the publisher felt that was too risqué, so he settled for My Wicked, Wicked Ways. He didn't live to see it published. My mother says she and all her girlfriends used to swoon over him in the Thirties. I don't think I'll stay up all night watching him . . . although I'll probably take a stab at it.

Have a great weekend!