Author: Glenn Hauman

On Gerry Cooney and Mitt Romney

My dad’s a born troublemaker. He used to make a habit, back in 1982, of saying that he was rooting for Gerry Cooney to win over Larry Holmes in the boxing match because Cooney was white, and he was white.

When he got back the appropriate level of shock from his audience, he’d say, “Now wait. If I said I was rooting for Cooney because he’s Irish and I’m Irish, you’d have no problems with it. If I said it was because he’s from Long Island and I’m from Long Island, it’d be okay. If I said it was because he’s 6’6 and I’m 6’6…” and by that point people got the general point he was trying to make.

I was reminded of this when listening to Mitt Romeny’s speech on religion, but for all the wrong reasons. Do I vote for Giuliani because he’s a white male from New York? Should people vote for Romney because his faith really isn’t that far from his?

And in the case of ol’ Mitt, should I support someone who doesn’t want to identify with me because I don’t believe in the same god he does? (More atheists in this country than, say, Mormons.)

How about this: vote for the guy who will do the best at the job and best live up to the ideals we profess.

Just for the novelty of it all.

Welcome to 21st Century America, where if you don’t tattoo your children you’re a bad parent.

Dear Lord.

It can happen anywhere—at an amusement park, zoo, school field trip, museum, or even your local shopping mall. Your attention shifts for a moment, and suddenly your child or loved one has wandered out of sight.

So put the odds in your favor for a safe return, with SafetyTat. Designed by a graphics professional and Mom of three kids, SafetyTat is a fun and colorful temporary tattoo that’s uniquely personalized with your phone number. When applied to the arm of your child or loved one, SafetyTat provides an immediate, highly visible form of identification that stays in place even when wet and lasts for days.

Are you scaaaaaared yet, mommy and daddy?

Ego, defined

While having a brief conversation with one of my few constant readers of this weblog who was threatening to never return if I didn’t start posting here, we started talking about the size of my ego. Mine, I suspect, is not dissimilar to Keith Olbermann’s, who once commented:

“This is the exact definition of my ego. When [Fox] had my head 40 feet high at Shea Stadium they said to me, ‘We’re going to give out 100,000 temporary tattoos of your face at the Super Bowl.’ And I just swallowed and said, ‘No. God. Don’t. You’re not going to, you can’t possibly—what do you mean, temporary?'”

But if you’re jonesing, you are reminded to come over and read my stuff over at ComicMix. Heck, you can even read the comic I’m coloring, Jon Sable Freelance.

Where I was 20 Years Ago

ABC News: 20 Years Later: Could Stocks Crash Again?:

Twenty years ago today, the U.S. stock market suffered its worst one-day drop ever: the Crash of ’87. The Dow Jones industrials plunged 508 points, or 22.6 percent, as waves of selling swamped the New York Stock Exchange. It was a market dislocation so intense that some pundits predicted another Great Depression.

I was a freshman at NYU, rooming with a finance major, and I heard what had happened– and wondered how bad it was going to be. I was up late that night, and walked out of my dorm on 5th Avenue (Rubin, if you must know) wondering how the world was going to change as a result.

And I was looking to the north when I saw the lights of the Empire State Building go out.

I was pretty new to the city, I didn’t know they turned out the lights every night. And only a few months earlier, I had read Atlas Shrugged, which ends with the lights of the Empire State Building and New York going out.

Brrrrrrr.

But then I looked to the south, and I was reassured– the lights were still on down there, at the World Trade Center. Everything was going to be okay.

Amazing how things can change in a few years, eh?