ELECTION NIGHT 2008:

It never happened in any of the Die Hard movies, but on November 4, 2008. John McClain finally lost his first battle. He took on Hans, The Blonde 80's Bad Guy from the second movie, and of course Jeremy Irons in a Shakespearan performance in Die Hard with a V is for Vendetta. I didn't see the fourth movie. However, on this night two forces teamed up that could not stop the Republican action hero beloved by millions of fans worldwide: The American Public and Barack Obama. He took punishing blow after blow across the country during a 3 hour thrill ride that could only be described as thrilling and 4 hours long. However, when Barack bowed in the last scene, we all knew that the movie and McClain's wild antics were at long last over.

Besides the jokes, it was an historic election. If the McCain that gave his Concession Speech campaigned for the past year instead of the strange persona that attended all of the debates and town hall meetings, then this may have been a closer election. However, this country knows what it wants: after 8 years of conservatives you will inevitably swing back and crave Democratics, especially after the especially forceful coservatism that was seen in the past 8 eight years - much different from the Reagan/Bush years as I understand them.

This country needed youth and that youth takes over with all the tools to help him succeed. We'll see what he and we all do with it.

Something to commemorate the fifth "Die Hard":


November 4


I woke up with a stomach ache,
The lyrics to “Idiot Wind” on my mind
I was thinking what sweater I’d wear
As I passed the storefronts and drawing blinds.

Paul Newman was dead two months,
They never played a marathon on TV,
But the mild November rain was coming in,
Just like it does every year with the fog.

I woke up and had no care for sub primes,
What I needed was coffee and surgery –
Something to keep me out of the bathroom
So that I could finish the work I wanted to.

The night before, Barack stepped on the stage –
Grant Park a moment of color, space and precision,
Like Chicago in ’68, those memories as commodity -
The reels we pack and will later sell.

Nothing could take away the seriousness,
The levity of relief or the assured redemption;
Not even snide aesthetes, political pundits
And all the other back slappers in the front.

Another black man on TV had God on his lips,
Which reminded me how often I shower,
But any institution that falls with time and funding
Should never be padded by one that never will.

There Grant Park stood like any of our living monuments,
The American apples we pick for the front pages.
But even with that green Callaway jewel in front of me
The night gave way to something that burned instead.

I thought of something that I truly didn’t know;
How you can tell the seasons by the color of her hair
The wild oranges, reds and maroons of summer that
Turn to the brown and blonde of the fall.

TR couldn’t have placed her at the top of his forest
And he wouldn’t know which girl to look at
As he gave speeches on the back of a train car
In downtown Sante Fe in 1904.

But TR would’ve run after that burning in his heart,
He would’ve beaten my sinister chest
Because there was no room for moments in his mind –
There was only that stick and the State who’d carry it.

I woke up and Barack Obama was the President,
His image flapping diagonally on the crossroads
Of faith, history and accountability
And leaving only the slightest breath of shade.

But in the middle of the afternoon my friends are drunk
And from their speakers Graceland is still on
We’re all wearing white tube socks in jeans
Sliding on wood floors without mothers.

Idiot Wind will pass us like any pulse of blood,
Just as we fantasize destroying everything we know.
The hypnotic march of music and our ambitions –
The glass we see the end of institutions in.

I don’t know what girl to hold in my hand
The feeling of my heart doesn’t mean its love
Because I want to buy them both fancy dinners
And I know how’d they’d both wear tan feathers.

The feeling in my heart doesn’t mean its love
Since my heart has throbbed for church organs,
Its throbbed for countless cigarettes and armhairs,
Friends and things that don’t make it into books.

Barack Obama is my new black president,
John Kennedy is my old dead president,
They both could call voices from the vasty deep
Most importantly from the bottom of our guts.

She’ll be late for all of her appointments
And he’ll drive drunk through the junipers
What they both want is to listen to somone
Who’ll tell them what stance to take to the world.

We’d elect Butch Cassidy if we could,
We’ve had our backwoodsman and womanizer,
There will always be a spot in the great garden
To sit next to Washington and his cherry tree.

These Presidents were surely prisoners to love
And they all came to the great rages of life,
The spilt garbage cans and dirtied fists
The blood that comes with coming to see.

By the copier machine, the songs come back
The fallen tree trunks and frozen creeks
Everything that happened before in summer,
With hot black top and stolen beer.

What ideals can we fit on our faces
While we ask each other about the weather?
You need to catch the next train uptown
And the last donut won’t be the one to kill you.

At the iron steps I hold her cold hands,
But its going to rain and I can’t wait
She lets me press on her maroon coat collar
While I watch her jog up to the platform with bags.

And at the other corner her bangs are light
She’s got blue eyes and needs hot tea
I can’t do anything for her and don’t care
Because I can touch her shoulder and cheek.

I woke up and everything was brand new,
There were clouds covering the sun,
The light came in slits from my curtain
And fell justly along the floor past my bed.

My local news anchor told me at the table
That Barack Obama is the president,
That all the best minds would find their way
Down to Washington as they once went to Rome,
But all I can think of is love and beer
And the fact that I’ll never go back home.
No president knows that about his voters,
He only knows that about himself
Which is why we hate them all alive
But love everything when its dead.