Yesterday was the third anniversary of my father’s death. Last night I lit a candle. Today I went to temple and sat through an entire, albeit informal and short, service. I said kaddish for him, and I said his name out loud.

I say to myself, this is what he wanted; that this is what he expected of me, expected without hesitation or question. I would go to temple, and I would say kaddish for him.

This, the third year after his death, was the first time that I could. Don’t get me wrong, I sat on my haunches at the back of the room, holding his gold chain with the tablets and the Lions of Judah, and cried the whole time. It was not easy.

But the torah says that this is holy: to honor thy father and mother, to give comfort to the sick, to visit the grieving, to rejoice with the bride and the groom. To honor thy father and thy mother.

The tallis I made for Daddy, the one in which he was buried, has that as its collar prayer. Tomorrow I will continue my quest for holiness and visit my mother.

After shul, I went to a bead show with Star and the Number 1 Surrogate Daughter and indulged in some heavy retail therapy. My grandmother, the mother of my father, always said that I had golden hands, that I had a gift. In doing my retail therapy, I merely honored Grandma Ida, as well.

I’ll make things, and I’ll sell them and the honorable chain of my family of artisans and merchants will go on.

You know, it seems that every time I turn around someone else, someone totally unworthy of the privilege, is getting jiggy with The Bob. Today there was the following article on Page Six.

EASILY SCARED

KINDERGARTEN kids in ritzy L.A. suburb Calabasas have been coming home to their parents and talking about the “weird man” who keeps coming to their class to sing “scary” songs on his guitar. The “weird” one turns out to be Bob Dylan, whose grandson (Jakob Dylan’s son) attends the school. He’s been singing to the kindergarten class just for fun, but the kiddies have no idea they’re being serenaded by a musical legend - to them, he’s just Weird Guitar Guy.

And you just know that they have no appreciation of the finer points of guitar picking or lyrics like “I used to care, but things have changed.”

Miserable rug rats.

And you also know, that, same as it ever was, I’ll be having a nice dinner complete with birthday cake on May 24, and the ungrateful man won’t show up at my door. I don’t get it.

A few years ago MTV had a contest along the lines of explain why you are your favorite artist’s biggest fan and we’ll send you on the road with them. Yeah. I didn’t win.  It’s not like I’m stalking him for pete’s sake. I mean, I never, ever rush the stage and grab him, unlike that 15-year-old emo skank in the Jerry Garcia t-shirt a few tours ago. I’ve never painted Soy Bomb on my naked chest and boogied like a spaz while The Bob edged away and waited for the bouncers to drag the loonie off. I thought about, but did not, rip off my arm sling and scream “I’ve been healed” when he made eye contact with me the year I had shoulder surgery, and I was mashed up against the stage in an open seating venue. I’ve never even dumped an entire serving bowl of potato salad on him, as one of The Coolest Person In The World’s other friends did, when she was in a buffet line and the person behind her asked for some, and she turned around and saw that it was The Bob*.

I’m respectful, dammit, and what does it get me? Bubkes, baby, bubkes.

Never mind. The table will be set for my personal Elijah, and if he wants some home cooking, he knows where to find it.

* Ever cool, he just said, “I didn’t want that much.”

Tata, over at Poor Impulse Control, went to a party for bloggers the other night. Said party was hosted by no less a personage (corporage?) than NBC its own self. Wow. I don’t get invites like that. Once there, the doors were locked, and souls were bargained for.

Find out what happened when Tata met the underlords of the dark.

In honor of the many thousands who have died or suffered grievous bodily harm in the four years since this momentous announcement by our Idiot In Chief, let me wish everyone a very happy “Mission Accomplished” Day.

As always, the Rude Pundit is more eloquent on this subject than I can ever be.

I’m sure that it was merely a coinkydink or oversight by the higher powers that this proclamation of arrogance and imperialism was made on National Workers’ Day (May Day).

Feh.

Here in Miami, the sun is shining and the people are in the streets, protesting our government policies regarding immigration. Will this help their cause? No. It will only annoy those of us who will be stuck in our offices at the end of a business day and can’t get home because of the blockaded streets and horn-blasting protesters.

My boss, The Skipper, sent this to me yesterday for my blog. He could give the Rude Pundit a run for his money, sometimes.

On Sunday, the Associated Press distributed its comprehensive list of boosh admin types who have had to leave the I-pledge-to-restore-honor-and-dignity-to-Washington administration under a cloud of corruption. Although this list does not include the dozens of Republican members of congress and their staff who are now falling at the rate of one-a-day (see Central Florida boosh buddy Tom Feeney as the very latest example), and although this list does not include those who’s greatest failing was/is sheer incompetence (Heckuva Job Brownie or heckuva plan Rummy or heckuva UN presentation Powell, for example), and although this list doesn’t include those who couldn’t even make it past a pliant Senate (Bernie Kerik, UN Ambassador Bolton, dozens of incompetent prospective federal jurists, for example) to join this benighted administration, and although this list doesn’t include all those U.S. Attorneys fired for one reason or another (all illegal), it is still a useful/enjoyable list:

Bush administration under a cloud

By The Associated Press Sun Apr 22, 1:41 PM ET

A rundown of Bush appointees who left under a cloud or face conflict-of-interest allegations

Do we really think that 5 million Rove and Mehlman e-mails went missing because a handful of US Attorneys were fired for blatantly political reasons? Puh-leeze! Those e-mails have been erased off the RNC server, and those e-mails were sent from a non-WH server to begin with because they no doubt detail intimate coordination of the so-called independent 527s (Swift Boats Liars for Truth) by the WH and RNC in 2004, in blatant and massively illegal violation of federal election laws. Under the 527 laws, none of the Swifties should have mentioned word one of their nefarious slimebagging to Rove and Mehlman and their stormtroopers. Wanna bet THAT didn’t happen?

After reading this list, do we think that ANYONE, other than Matt Drudge, Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, Henry Hyde, John McCain, Bill McCollum (all men of questionable lifestyle and morals themselves), really cares about the unspeakable evil of blue dresses that never quite made it to the dry cleaners?

I had a rough day yesterday, and was more than ready to settle in on the sofa with the glass of red wine, fuzzy slippers and fuzzy doggie. It’s TV night at the Casita des Zapatos, and time again for the bitches and the hos. Whee. Good times, peoples, good times. Except. Not. Because at the end of the show, my sweet, gently bewildered Jael was the first girl to head back to the states. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Open on the usual shit talking about who went home and how nobody’s going to miss them. Random leaping about concerning who’s left.

Doorbell rings and in walks…uh, that pointy-faced girl from Season Two? The one who got her own on-line talk show? April. The one that Nigel was so hot for. The one who didn’t win. She’s going to teach them how to interview and be interviewed. She has a grinning little midget friend with her to help her with the examples of talking too much and talking to little. He looks like Teller, only shorter and with a rubberier face. Woof.

Then the girls team up and practice. Jael and Dionne get nasty with each other, but Jael is, and it pains me to say this, terrible. No, really, I mean terrible in new and different ways, most of them involving bizarre facial contortions and wildly inappropriate body language.

Natasha isn’t too bad, Jaslene has really big teeth, Renee is such a hateful ass that I don’t care if she does well or not. Brittney reveals that she doesn’t know if she can do this sort of thing because she got run over by a car when she was 17, bounced her head off the curb, had 8 (or 18—accounts varied) staples in her head and absolutely no short term memory any more. I wonder if that’s why she couldn’t keep her weave pretty? She couldn’t remember how to handle it? Wash/comb…don’t wash/don’t comb…

And then, they learn that they are going to have to take their newly-honed skills out into the real world and interview people on the street. The streets of Sydney, Australia. And there is Tyra in a broke-ass kangaroo suit. I love Tyra, because she is fierce and fabulous enough to let herself be put in a ratty roo suit and hop up and down on my TV screen. The woman deserves some sort of Emmy for that. Natasha doesn’t understand for, like, a minute or two that they are going to Australia, and then she starts shrieking like a banshee. It’s pretty funny, in an ear-splitting, nails-on-a-blackboard sort of way.

We see them pack, we see the little animated plane with their faces in the windows, and then we see them disembark in Sydney. Jael is wearing a flowered mini-tank dress over jeans and a lime-fucking-green tu-tu. It’s reeeeealy mind blowing, and not in a good way. Who had brain damage, again?

They are met by an Aussie supermodel who treats them to a slang-filled welcome speech. As you would expect, there are crickets chirping everywhere. Especially around Jaslene, who has really, really big front teeth. I’ve seen beavers with smaller front teeth. The model gives the girls (and Jaslene)a guide book to Aussie slang, a microphone and a big send-off to discuss American fashion faux-pas with the guy on the street. They will score points for each usage of the slang.

Dionne rocks that, basically by using what I suspect is her own verbal tic, but which coincidentally is also in the phrase book…“That’s cool.” Repeated two or three times after every response. But she says “I want to AKS you a question” which had me sticking my fingers in my ears.

Jaslene is just pathetic, Brittney talks to an American and is told that in the interviewee’s opinion, the worst thing American girls do is to wear skimpy tank tops with their bra straps showing. OMG! I was there being interviewed and I didn’t even know it. Brit, of course, is wearing a skimpy tank top with her bra straps showing. I love this show.

Natasha, who already learned one new language and has the skills for it, totally nails the use of slang in her interviews. She’s cute, and perky and just adorable.

Jael is, uh, not.

Then it’s off to their new digs and on to the Cover Girl commercials, where they have to memorize their lines and deliver them in an Australian accent. This is one time when I almost wished for closed captioning.

They are all just dreadful. Renee is dressed in poufy sleeves and really ugly eye makeup and delivers like (she says) Steve Irwin. In judging, the panel agrees that she did sound like a man, and maybe that wasn’t the best choice of role model when you are selling lippy.

Dionne comes back with her Jamaican-not accent. Brit cries and blows her lines even with cue cards and wahwahwahs about getting run over and having no short term memory. We know, because you already told us that story, and we do remember it.

Jaslene can’t speak American English, and her attempts at an Australian accent are embarrassing and awful and grating and pitiful. On the up side? She nails her lines without cue cards.

Jael is totally done in by the need to be cute, sweet and perky. She proves to be utterly incapable of smiling on cue. In fact, she sort of reminds me of the scene in Addams Family Values where Cristina Ricci is at sleep away camp and is forced to smile, and all the other campers squish back and start to cry that she’s scaring them. Yeah. It was pretty much like that. She cries and climbs a tree to make herself feel better, but we all know that this is it for my favorite little anarchist.

Natasha does an Austrailo-Soviet accent, which is much more endearing than it sounds.

Judging! Jael is looking fabu in a dress and heels. We see the commercial and it opens and closes on Renee. She is getting the fucking redemption arc so large and blatantly that it looks like McDonald’s neon arches in Times Square. The judges comment on the fact that Jaslene has this history(?) of drag queens. What? First we heard that she was raised by drag queens, and now she has all this experience with drag queens. See? This is what I’m saying… Jaslene IS a fucking drag queen.

In a huge upset during panel, the Aussie model talks about how the girls got off the plane (we see the flashback to Jael and her lime green tutu) and of all of them Jael (says the model) was the one who came out with enthusiasm and joy and a passion for the job and and and. Well. She was out-voted. The looks that passed between Nigel and Twiggy and even Miss Jay? Hokey smokes, Bullwinkle, they could not have been happier to finally give Jael the old heave ho. But it was certain curtains for Jael when Tyra said that she didn’t look like a Cover Girl, she looked like an anarchist cruelly mimicing a Cover Girl.

Then the panel discussed Brit’s head injury and subsequent short-term memory loss. Right. Head injury. Sure it was. That’s not what they tell us in drug class. It’s something else that causes long term loss of short term memory. Well, I think that’s what I remember them saying.

The bottom two are Brit and Jael, and Brit gets to stay, along with this advice: Sack up ho, and figure out how to deal with your disability.

Personally, I thought Jaslene should have been standing there with Jael, and I would have preferred to see her skinny ass out on the tarmac, but so it goes.

The winner of the challenge, remember the challenge? was Natasha, who received as her prize a field reporter job on the Tyra Talk Show. No kidding. How cool is that?

Next week, I don’t know what to expect because I didn’t get any previews. All I know is that with my pet anarchist gone, who cares. I’m going to go climb a tree and pet the grass. Who will protect us from the evil ducks of the universe now?