you say it's your birthday
it's my birthday too


Bob Gruen, Patti Smith On Knees, Central Park 1976

* Top ten conservative idiots. excerpt:

"8. Paul Wolfowitz

"Last week World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz began to 'negotiate the terms under which he would resign, in return for the bank dropping or softening the charge that he had engaged in misconduct,' according to the New York Times. Now it turns out that Wolfowitz will happily resign on June 30, provided that the World Bank says he didn't do anything wrong when he gave his girlfriend a promotion and a fat pay raise.

"That might sound dubious, but it's not. See, George W. Bush explained the situation last week when he said, 'All I can tell you is Paul Wolfowitz has an interest in what's best for the bank.'

"Sure, Wolfowitz has admitted he made a mistake when, shortly after becoming president of the World Bank, he helped his girlfriend to get a cushy job at the State Department while keeping her on the Bank's payroll. And he may certainly regret increasing her salary to $193,590, which is more than the Secretary of State earns. And yes, despite the fact that the Bank's board wanted his ass out of there, he refused to step down unless they cleared him of all wrongdoing (not to mention give him a nice severance package).

"But let's be fair - he was just doing what's best for the World Bank."

* Former president Carter slams Bush. excerpt:

"Former president Jimmy Carter called President Bush's international relations 'the worst in history' and also took aim at Bush's environmental policies and the administration's 'quite disturbing' faith-based initiative program.

"The criticism came in an interview with the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, which reported Carter's remarks Saturday. The denunciation of a sitting president was unprecedented for Carter, a biographer said.

"The former president also lashed out at British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Asked by BBC Radio how he would judge Blair's support of Bush, Carter said: 'Abominable. Loyal. Blind. Apparently subservient. And I think the almost undeviating support by Great Britain for the ill-advised policies of President Bush in Iraq have been a major tragedy for the world."
...
"Carter said that Bush's policy of preemptive war, "where we go to war with another nation militarily, even though our own security is not directly threatened," was "a radical departure from all previous administration policies."

"Carter also offered a harsh assessment for the White House's Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, which helps religious charities receive billions in federal grants.

"'As a traditional Baptist, I've always believed in separation of church and state and honored that premise when I was president, and so have all other presidents, I might say, except this one,' he said."

* From an Index interview of Bijou Phillips, daughter of John Phillips:

BRUCE: It says in the book that Mick Jagger and Jerry Hall were baby-sitting you once when your parents were going through heroin withdrawal, and Mick and Jerry wouldn't give you back to them because they were too fucked up. And then your father tried to burn down his own house. Do you remember that?

BIJOU: No. I was only three. My dad went to jail at the time, and no one would give my mom money.

BRUCE: But she had lots of rich, celebrity friends.

BIJOU: My parents fucked so many people over that no one wanted to talk to either of them. Me and my mom ended up sleeping on the street.

BRUCE: You weren't sleeping on the street!

BIJOU: Yeah, we slept on the street a couple of nights, in doorways. And we had to steal food.

BRUCE: I read that your dad was a real grifter.

BIJOU: At one point, he bought a drugstore so he wouldn't have to cop on the street anymore.

BRUCE: And before he became famous he was a mailman, but he was too lazy to deliver the mail so he'd just throw it away.

BIJOU: He's just dumb.
...
BRUCE: You came to New York when you were fourteen. Sleuth says that you pretended to have a heroin habit so you could go to rehab to get away from your parents.

BIJOU: Okay, here's what happened. I had gotten a hold of my dad's credit card when I was fourteen, and I started buying all this stuff. I would have food delivered and furniture delivered, and I charged about ten grand on the card and no one did anything for six months. I hadn't tried heroin because I've always been kind of scared of it, and then one day a friend of mine was in town from L.A. and I hung out with him. He had some China dust and I snorted some of it. I'd taken E earlier with this other friend — I was really into drugs at the time — and then I went over to another friend's hotel room, and his friend had just flown in from L.A. with a gigantic chunk of Mexican tar.

BRUCE: Is that heroin?

BIJOU: Yeah, New York is powder and here in L.A. we smoke it. So we smoked the heroin for three days in the hotel room. I smoked a bunch of it and I passed out for a day. Then I woke up and we went to Central Park to ride on the Carousel.
...
BRUCE: Now, according to Celebrity Sleuth, Lemon Dando — I mean, Evan Dando — deflowered you. T or F?

BIJOU: Basically, yeah. We'd been going out for about two weeks, and then I threw a barbell out a window and almost hit Anna Sui in the head.
BRUCE: [laughing] Almost!

BIJOU: And he had a heart attack, like freaked out and got so mad at me. 'You could have killed somebody! You can't just throw a barbell from the twentieth floor in New York City! You just can't do that!' Then he calmed down and we were making out, and he said, 'Should we have sex?' and I was like, 'Um, I guess.'

BRUCE: And you were how old?

BIJOU: I was sixteen. Or was I fifteen?

BRUCE: You could've busted him.

BIJOU: And then he dumped me four days later.

BRUCE: [whispering] Was it ... you know, big?

BIJOU: No. And it was over in about five seconds. I was like, 'That's it? Isn't it supposed to last longer?' And he said, 'Well, I was really excited.' I said, 'Yeah, the barbell must have really worked you up.' And he dumped me four days later.

BRUCE: Was he a jerk?

BIJOU: Afterwards, yeah. At first he was like, 'God, I love you, I want to marry you.' And I was just naive. But he was a rock star, and I had this daddy thing. I thought I could make my dad jealous if I was dating a cute young rock star.

* "Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious." -- Oscar Wilde

* Others born today.