Quotes & In Conversation

Suggesting that we stop recognizing married people:

Yesterday I called a woman’s spouse her boyfriend.

She says, correcting me, “He’s my husband,”
“Oh,” I say, “I no longer recognize marriage.”

The impact is obvious. I tried it on a man who has been in a relationship for years,

“How’s your longtime companion, Jill?”
“She’s my wife!”
“Yeah, well, my beliefs don’t recognize marriage.”

President-elect-elect Obama on the manly dog he will be bringing to the White House:

Barack Obama [asking about Barbara Walters' dog]: "Cha Cha?"

Barbara Walters: "It's short for Cha Cha Cha."

Obama: "What is a Havanese?"

Walters: "It's like a little terrier and they're non-allergenic and they're the sweetest dogs.."

Obama: [Face suddenly changes.] "It's like a little yappy dog?"

Michelle Obama: "Don't criticize."

Obama: "It, like, sits in your lap and things?"

Michelle: "It's a cute dog."

Obama: "It sounds kinda like a girly dog."

Michelle: "We're girls. We have a houseful of girls."

Obama [with hand gestures]: "We're going to have a big rambunctious dog, of some sort."

I do also believe that this is the finest & wittiest Obama impersonator:

Go read Dave Eggers' funny Thanksgiving play in the New York Times,
& Sarah Palin Poetry:

And the relevance to me
With that issue,
As we spoke
About Africa and some
Of the countries
There that were
Kind of the people succumbing
To the dictators
And the corruption
Of some collapsed governments
On the Continent,
The relevance
Was Alaska’s.

What the philistine media take for incoherence is, in fact, the fruitful ambiguity of verse.

Here she is, in a work I have taken to calling “The Relevance of Africa.” (Not a single word or comma has been changed, but the line breaks are placed where they naturally fall.) In it, Palin blends the energy of free verse with the austerity of a classic 14-line sonnet... A great poet needs to leave open the door between the conscious and unconscious; Sarah Palin has removed her door from its hinges. A great poet does not self-censor; Sarah Palin seems authentically innocent of what she is saying. She could be the most natural, visionary poet since William Blake.

-Julian Gaugh