Monday, August 22, 2005
The Palmeiro Look
by Ilya
I admit it, when I first read Johnny's groundbreaking photo essay on the "Bush Look," I was concerned that my globe-trotting blogger-in-crime had suffered a bad fall down a flight of wacky Japanese stairs, thereby damaging his frontal lobe and crippling his higher brain functions. Or perhaps Johnny was suffering toxic shock psychosis from excess Toppo consumption. I mean, they've got, like, a billion ways to get hurt in Asia, so who knows.
Well, not only was Johnny mentally sound as can be, but the "Bush Look," and its equally-adroit sequel, "The Bush Look II" got him on the short-list for the Pulitzer. Unfortunately, Johnny finished a close second in the hotly-contested literary rumble (damn you, Walter Bogdanovich.) What he won, however, was my undying respect.
Scholars of history know all too well that there are many brilliant minds whose genius was not recognized until long after their passing. Men like Van Gogh, Leibniz, and Doogie Howser (M.D.) posessed a depth of understanding and breadth of knowledge that wasn't appreciated until long after their deaths.
After all, it was not until someone picked up one of Edison's light bulbs and thought, "My god, that guy was onto something," that the man's genius would come to be appreciated, and I suspect the same shall one day be said of Johnny's contributions to our nation's comprehension of press conference body language.
I myself had surely not given the Bush Look the proper credit it deserved. Of course, I had skimmed through Johnny's original posts, much like one skims through old high school yearbooks, looking for girls who you could totally get with if you only had a time machine, a bunch of money, and a personality.
But I never really saw the Bush Look for what it was: a beautiful stained glass window into the soul of a man who can basically just blow shit up whenever he feels like it.
Yes, I had taken the Bush Look for granted, and it was going to cost me the best years of my life if I didn't turn things around in a hurry. I stumbled around in a daze for weeks, desperately searching for a new example of the Bush Look in the wild.
It was a grueling odyssey. I spent hours each day hunting through AP and Reuters clippings, desperate for a glimpse of that roguish grin and well-defined dimples, with their power to convey authority, leadership, intelligence, and general hotness.
As my desperation grew, I hatched increasingly elaborate plans to meet Bush and to receive the Look from him. I taught myself to juggle. I flossed daily, and with vigor. I took classes in Korean. I nominated myself for Supreme Court justice, forging a decorated history of legal service.
"Look," I wrote on my Supreme Court justice application, "I would be the first Supreme Court justice to know how to juggle in Korean. That's got to count for something, right? Plus, I think abortion is gay."
The application was rejected. They went with the Roberts guy, which is frustrating, because his application said exactly the same thing as mine, minus the Korean juggling.
Although I never received a nomination, I was invited to participate in congressional hearings on steroid usage in baseball. I had never played baseball, so this was somewhat awkward, but I went anyway. Mostly just for the hors d'oeuvres.
As I polished off my third crispy crab cake while listening to Sammy Sosa's testimony, I turned to my closest neighbor and whispered, "He is soooo on the juice" My neighbor laughed, and flashed me a knowing smile.
Time stood still. I was breathless. A crab cake had lodged in my throat. But also, I realized that the man I was talking to was giving me the Bush Look:
Yeah, okay, so it wasn't actually Bush. It was some baseball dude. But for that one brilliant, shining moment, it was as if the love of God was pouring from those piercing eyes and into my warm, spiritual nexus of love and understanding.
And then I spat up my crab-cake.
