I watched Bill speak tonight at the DNC, and I'm left asking the question "Can't we just let Bill run the show for awhile"?  The man can lead, and after watching the Bush/Kerry debacle meander along, I know what I want in my President: someone with cajones and a brain.  I don't give a damn about what Bill did with his willy while in the White House as it has no bearing on his ability to command.  I want Bush out badly, but the vision of Kerry in charge is less than inspiring relative to the mess at hand.  Whatever is to become of us...

Movie recommendation:  Matchstick Men with Nicholas Cage is a quirky little vehicle for one of America's most under-appreciated actors.  Intriguing plot with a spectacular twist at the end, and Nick does a splendid job of creating a character overun by his obsessive-compulsive disorder.  Grade-A

Has Lance Armstrong used performance enhancing drugs to achieve his record six Tour de France victories?  Maybe, but whether he has or still does, I'm sure that most or possibly all of the top riders do as well.  We expect athletes to be perfect, and we yearn for the heros that sport can produce, providing us with a chance to daydream away the mundane and the bland.  We are in large part responsible for the scourge of drugs ravaging the sporting world, and how many of us would pass up a chance to be a hero and bask in the perpetual adulational of the adoring fan?  We fan the fire, and we are the ones who keep throwing logs on the pile.  We demand the spectacular, that records be broken, and better that they be smashed.  We don't ask our athletic superheros to do anymore than we can dream, and yet we pass serious judgement when they fail and expose their human fraility.  Having riden a bike thousands of miles myself, through heat, cold, rain, over mountains and into the teeth of ferocious winds, I applaude Lance and imagine how it must feel to be THE bicycle rider on the planet.  Drugs or not, what he has accomplished is simply grand...

Is anybody out there???  I get the feeling that my blog has become like the tree that falls in the forest, and no one is present to hear the noise...