EDGE on the Net

And we thought the ’00s were rough. The "Worst Decade Ever" was being mercifully put to sleep when I took to South Florida for a Christmas break, only to arrive amid airport insanity, split-open jets, and a just-averted crazed terrorist with bad underwear -- and that was Ivana Trump. I leave a New York snowstorm to arrive in Miami amid record-breaking cold, so devastating that the male newsmen, who for some reason are all under 30 and have the intellectual depth of the Miami Herald, were forced to report on the travesty in unflattering windbreakers. Anchor hunk Rob Schmitt’s hair was so cold the products kept falling out like the frozen iguanas dropping out of trees.

The streets were dead, as all the bears took to an early hibernation in Ft. Lauderdale, but even venturing out to a chi-chi Design District restaurant on New Year’s Eve turned into a scarier scene than Happy Hour at Halo. Not only did Queen Latifah show up with her pussies, er, posse, but there’s a custom in that part of the world to shoot your guns off aimlessly into the sky at midnight, never mind the consequences or casualties.

While I appreciated Miami-Dade’s sentimental tribute to their appointed leader, the amusement ended when a six-year-old Italian boy was hit not more than a hundred feet from where we were dining. I want justice, I want answers, and just as soon as that kid’s back from rendition I want to know why he put our country at risk by eating out at such a late hour. Sometimes you gotta believe David Letterman when he says the whole country looks like NBC.

Naturally, I wanted to get out of that insane white land and back to the dark-skinned, Gangsta-rap-voiced, big butt and fat-lipped America that makes up this great nation of ours, until Harry Reid had the nerve to suggest that those guys are sometimes short-shifted in favor of lighter-skin folk who speak like Mary Hart. Why that’s almost as insensitive as suggesting that silicone implants will help women get into "Playboy" or that Hillary was judged more on her pantsuits than her policies.

Sometimes you need to hear Rush Limbaugh’s denouncement of Caribbean charity to understand where we’re coming from. He knows first-hand about ingratitude. The man once traveled all the way to the Dominican Republic, only to find out that the nearby Haitian prostitutes weren’t decent enough to rid themselves of the AIDS virus before he arrived, and came home with nothing more than a drug habit and a bottle of Viagra. Next time he says we should screw the bastards, someone might want to revoke his visa. And his Am-Ex.

I flew home in terror, as the Christmas Day Bomber gave way to the Little Buddy Bomber, the Hawaii-bound man who managed to have an entire flight turned around after a note concealed his fear of crashing into the ocean and being eaten by sharks or headhunters. The cryptic message contained a reference to "Gilligan’s Island," which, as CNN reported, was the "1960s-vintage CBS television comedy about a charter boat crew and their oddball passengers who become shipwrecked and wind up living together on a tropical island." Like most Americans, I was stunned, shocked, and devastated by that report. What’s become of our world when a reporter has to explain the plot of "Gilligan’s Island"?

Vintage TV shows are all the rage, as I arrived, not in New York City, but "Land of the Lost." American Target hopefuls were all over the airwaves reminding the world how much safer we were when we were being obliterated. Rudy Giuliani said we had "no domestic attacks under Bush," an echo of former Bush press secretary Dana Perino, who said in November, "We did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush’s term," which follows the logic of former senior aide to Dick Cheney, Mary Matalin, who said in December, "We inherited the most tragic attack on our own soil." Cheney himself reminded us that, unlike today, we were safe under the protection of his Bush.

Even though the Fab Fear don’t even pretend to stand behind the President when attempted attacks occur on someone else’s watch, or that their last-decade report card also leaves out the Maryland sniper, the LAX shooter, anthrax, or their 2004 New York City Convention, which, contrary to their new fear of law and order in the Big Apple, was to show the terrorists we’re not going to live life dictated by someone else’s terms (they proved it, too, by dictating evil pizza delivery boys into holding cells), on one area, they did reveal a weakness.

In response to the attempted jet explosion, the President waited a whole six days to say a paltry "We’ve got to be aware that there are still enemies to the country. And our government is responding accordingly." It was a deflated and tardy comment, considering what the country had just been through, and it was George W. Bush’s response to Shoe Bomber Richard Reid’s failed attempt to blow up a plane just three months after 9/11. Those of us who are not living on Fantasy Island know that Reid was convicted of trying to blow up a commercial aircraft in-flight by one of those radical U.S. Federal Courts that the Right now believe threaten our very planet. Sometimes you need to hear the Pope say that gays are polluting the planet to make sense of the new logic.

On the environment, Pope Benedict stated "Creatures differ from one another and can be protected, or endangered, in different ways, as we know from daily experience. One such attack comes from laws or proposals which, in the name of fighting discrimination, strike at the biological basis of the difference between the sexes." In addition to reduced water standards, lead toys, mercury-filled lakes, and gas-emitting cow gas, the Vatican has introduced our biggest environmental hazard to date: The Queen House Effect.

There was a little bit of cheer when I got back, namely Mariah Carey, the singer who has the sole distinction of being the artist with the most number one singles that no one’s ever heard. After 20 years in the business, she finally did what I thought impossible. Accepting an award stoned out of her mind, Carey actually entertained me in front of a microphone.

That precious moment wouldn’t last, however, for, shortly afterward, Haiti went to Hell. After I listened to Pat Robertson’s sermon, I realized they also had an earthquake. Am I the only one who’s figured out that Robertson’s actually a double agent for Al-Qaeda? I can’t think of another person on the planet, with the possible exception of Kathie Lee Gifford, who’s done more to defame the good name of Christianity.

The decade is off to such a dismal start I had to take joy in the little things, like Nancy Meyers’ hit comedy "It’s Complicated." It gave me a chuckle knowing audiences will laugh at, well, anything, given that Meryl’s film is one of the un-funniest movies ever. OMG, old folks get drunk, stoned, and have stupid affairs just like real people. I understand that in the sequel, "It’s Constipated," Meryl’s gonna throw up a lot more and make endless fart jokes.

The musical "Nine" made me weep with sentiment...for a real musical. Tom Delay’s "Dancing with the Stars" choreography was more challenging. I was so heartbroken I almost flew back to Florida’s Disney World, until I read that the group PFOX (Parents of Ex-Gays & Gays) wants the Magic Kingdom to include "ex-gays" among the list of Disney employees who aren’t discriminated against. I’m not sure how it works in the State Formerly Known for Sunshine, but where I grew up the only reason men and women became "ex-gays" was to avoid discrimination in the first place.

Sometimes you just need to read about the death of the World’s Strongest Man to appreciate the irony. Joe Rollino, who would have been 105 in March, and who once lifted 3,200 pounds at Coney Island, and who, just this year, was bending quarters between his fingers, was struck dead by a minivan on January 11. He was crossing a street in Brooklyn. He didn’t drink, he didn’t smoke, he exercised every day, and he belonged to that elite group of men who could rip book binders at the seams. Friends said he was the model of health up until the day of the accident. The driver of the minivan was not speeding or drunk, but did have a defective horn. Despite how hard we try, and despite all our good intentions, sometimes the world just ends on a joke.