Danke schÖn!

This time every year, many of us are up to our armpits in alligators. For some, it means guerilla expeditions to shopping emporiums for last-minute gifts. Others can’t get away; they either sit hunkered down before glowing screens, generating the next wave of consumable content for hungry eyeballs, or else they repose in Barcaloungers and La-Z-Boys, utterly drained of anything resembling original thought.

I found myself doing the latter this past weekend. Even the television let me down—someone had tried to water a nearby plant, missed the pot but hit the telly, and suddenly there was hissing and sparks and foul-smelling smoke. And no goose-stepping on the Hitler, I mean, History Channel, and no snarling-pundit shows recapping the recent coup d’état on Fox News or CNN, and no brain-deadening green expanses and Buick commercials on the Golf Channel. Boo hoo.

So there I lounged, staring at a blank screen, unable to muster the strength to drive downtown to see Acme Rocket Quartet at Old Ironsides as planned, unable even to muster the energy to look in TV Guide to see what I was missing on the tube.

Speaking of goose-stepping and missing out on cool stuff, Sacramento boasts a variety of entertainment options—hip-hop, rock, jazz, country and classical music, plays, movies. But nowhere in this burg do we get the kind of quality entertainment that some lucky folks at a Hilton Hotel in Miami got to see over Thanksgiving weekend.

If you’ll recall, “Algore” and those uppity Democrats tried to steal an election that was already stolen fair and square by the Bush clan. The situation was getting critical in Miami-Dade, and there was a chance that ballots from precincts with large numbers of minorities—probably for “Algore”—might get counted before GOP officials could transport them to the bottom of Lake Okeechobee where they belonged.

Party officials demanded an immediate response, so hundreds of spontaneous demonstrators were flown to Miami from all over the country, put up at the Hilton and issued “Sore/Loserman” placards to wave at cameras. The spontaneous demonstration was run from a command center in a huge RV, like some Kristallnacht in a Winnebago. It worked, too—those traitorous ballot counters stopped their seditious activity before too much bodily harm could be inflicted.

The party afterward really looked promising. After many high-fives and stiff-armed salutes when president-select Bush and puppeteer, I mean, veep-select Cheney phoned in “megadittoes,” the crowd was treated to some quality entertainment.

Wayne Newton, live, singing “Danke Schön.”

I’m not making this up. Sheesh, who wouldn’t pay to see the Midnight Idol kicking out the jams on a boffo Teutonic “thank you” to a bunch of randy lads all worked up on an authoritarian-government tip? I know I would, and I’m disappointed we aren’t getting that sort of showmanship in this town.

C’mon, Sacramento Republicans—where’s your sense of style? Get busy!