The Weekender, Vol. 1

So as this column develops, I’ll continue to toy with formats and whatnot but I think my brother Dan has a good idea with two smaller posts and one large post per week. I’ll be sure to deviate from this almost immediately — I can virtually guarantee one lost afternoon to the Giada-Barefoot Contessa power hour on the Food Network — but I will do my best to put something up for my handful of readers.

Consider this post the first edition of The Weekender, a play on what some might call an 18-pack of Budweiser and the movie “The Highlander”, which I recently had the pleasure of seeing for the first time since I was 9 years old. The Weekender is also the name of an offer from the New York Times for papers Friday through Sunday. I will defeat this Weekender because there can be only one.

(SIDENOTE: I died a little this previous week after purchasing a nine-pack of Miller Lite. For the past six years I’ve been advocating for beer to be sold in packs of nine cans — The Niner — to bridge the gap between Joe Six-Pack and Tina Twelver. I always wanted nine beers because when you show up at a party, to be nice you hand out a couple but you want to make sure you get yours so you don’t seem like a mooch. If you have a six-pack you could only be left with three cans, which isn’t conducive to “having a good time.” If you have a 12-pack then you could find yourself with nine or 10 drinks but you could also find yourself with a police record in the morning. Hence: the Niner. You give out a couple of drinks with a good, responsible amount left over. And you’re no mooch. Slogan: “When you want to limit yourself but only after you’re drunk.”)

(SIDE-SIDENOTE: I’m a lightweight.)

A quick glance back at the McCain-Obama debate at Hofstra (It was a long weekend for me, you know, being unemployed and all.), which featured a laughing Obama and a teeth-baring McCain. My buddy Sean said McCain sounded like an old man trying to return soup at the deli. If it was Obama returning the soup, the deli could expect Bill Ayers to have planted a bomb in it, according to the McCain camp. If it was McCain returning the soup, the deli could expect the erratic McCain to demand repayment in tiger pelts, according to the Obama camp.

At this point, we have seen a tightening in some states, and I think Obama does need to be concerned with 15 days to go. McCain has been so conflicted since earning the GOP nod. He’s tried to make nice with the base by staying away from who he wanted, Joe Lieberman, and going with Sarah Palin (check out this New Yorker article). He’s hired the same guys that ripped him apart in 2000. And all this hasn’t quite worked and he has dimes to Obama’s dollars in fundraising.

So, what should we watch for? McCain doing the McCain thing and getting all Mavericky by letting Palin go off and do her hockey mom schtick for the base and a liberated McCain getting back to his town hall roots and reeling off in the neighborhood of 150,000 meetings in the last 15 days. Think of it this way: When the cat’s away, the mouse will play. Palin ramps up the anger to turn out the base; McCain is McCain and draws moderates and independents.

Of course that could all come undone when the Obama wave hits Election Day harder than Michael Moore hits a snack cake.

On Saturday, Palin chatted up “Saturday Night Live”, and I thought it was kind of disappointing, probably because of the candidate’s visible discomfort. She looked ready to break into the Pepto Bismol dance.

The following morning, Gen. Colin Powell revealed one of the worst kept secrets on “Meet the Press” when he endorsed Obama. In retrospect Powell really needed to break out his inner Al Davis and use an overhead projector (not the $3 million “overhead projector” McCain slams Obama for securing) to  detail his disappointment with the party. But then again Powell may shy away from such devices during presentations in the near future. Powell’s damnation of the GOP’s direction, in which he came up just short of calling them “dream killers”, was alarming. But what’s damning is that Powell is precisely the type of Republican McCain is supposed to have locked up.

It’s like your parents shrugging you off and buying Girl Scout cookies from the neighbor.