Goodbye, Breakfast Club

Despite the timely title, the title is hardly a tribute to the late John Hughes (although plans for a Breakfast Club party are percolating). No, this post is actually intended as a way to pay my respects to the passing of my own Breakfast Club -- a group that I regularly did brunch with here in Winston for the past two years. With JaryMane leaving town on Saturday for the bright lights of Chicago, and DJ Dan heading to the West Coast only weeks before, I have suddenly found myself the only Breakfast Club member left to roam our old stomping grounds in Winston.

Below I detail -- In Memoriam -- the members of my Breakfast Club. RIP.

	DJ Dan. AKA, "the Athlete" Earned his nickname through keeping a ridiculous pace during hikes to South Mountain or the Profile Trail around Grandfather Mountain and never breaking a sweat. Jerk.
	J.P. AKA, "the Princess" Earned her nickname through the fact that she was obviously worshipped by DJ Dan. Molly Ringwald had nothing on J.P.
	"GED", AKA, "the Brain" The ironically-named GED was the first one to leave, moving on to the rarified lands of New York City law schools, where she has already started her inevitable march to the US Supreme Court.
	DW, AKA "the Criminal" Oh yes, recently I got all my hair cut off. Arrrgh! I'm a pirate.
	JaryMane, AKA "the Basketcase" Earned her nickname through the fact that she is a vegan who kills rats (true! trying figuring that one out...) and the fact that she left Winston-Salem for Chicago. What is she thinking? That's right, she's crazy. But she will be missed.

My closing tribute to the Breakfast Club:

We accepted the fact that we had to sacrifice whole Sunday mornings eating brunch with one another for whatever it was we did wrong, but we think its crazy to write an essay telling you who we think we are. You may see us as you want to see us... In the simplest terms and the most convenient definitions: We found that each one of us is a brain, an athlete, a basketcase, a princess, and a criminal.

Sincerely yours, the Breakfast Club.

Two Americas: Part 4382910

Blue America:
I ate lunch today with an African American friend of mine who got back from a trip to Chicago on Wednesday. She had bought her ticket months ago for a conference and was supposed to fly back to North Carolina on Tuesday. But when Tuesday arrived, it had became clear that win or lose, there was going to be "The Event" in Grant Park (as it was apparently called in Chi-Town). She decided that being there represented a sort of once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and decided to pay an extra $100 to delay her flight a day.

For whatever reason, I was fairly (perhaps overly) confident that Obama would win for months. Not so with my friend. She didn't suspect foulplay, she just couldn't convince herself that Americans would vote for a black President. She said that it wasn't until the results rolled in on the jumbotron announcing that Obama had won Ohio and Pennsylvania that she realized that she was going to be on hand hearing Barack Obama give a victory speech that night. Then the fact that Virginia voted for Obama -- a state that only a little over 40 years ago had "separate but equal" laws -- blew her mind.

Red America:
On the night of Barack Obama's victory speech, I received a forward from a conservative I know presenting a case that Obama was a clinical narcissistic. One piece of evidence: Obama has written his own memoirs before attaining power, just like Josef Stalin and Adolf Hitler. The writer of this essay warned that the consequences of putting a clinical narcissist like Obama in the seat of power might be informed by looking at the examples of Stalin and Hitler.

In the process of responding to this email, I also made it clear that I was disgusted with another forward I received from him showing a picture of Michelle Obama side-by-side with a picture of a chimpanzee. Today the conservative replied to this email with another one of his own simply titled "Sigh..." which read:

Why are certain people so selectively offended?

Liberal "Sophisticates" thought the type of stuff below was Pretty Funny especially in early 2000:

http://www.bushorchimp.com/
http://www.mrsockmonkey.com/topics/Pictures-Where-George-Bush-Looks-Like-a-Monkey/

Go ahead . . . google “Bush looks like monkey” and see what you get.

My response to this email? SIGH. . . . . . . . .