Wednesday, October 11, 2000

By BILLY MURPHY
Laugh Lines

I feel I am very structured in my writing and usually have a very specific subject, but every once in while, I guess all of us need to rant incessantly on whatever is on our minds. So with no Elian Gonzalez-sized crusade to attend to, that is what this week's column is about, ranting.

As shameless self-promotion, I am playing guitar and singing this whole month at Don Pablo's in Peachtree City. On Tuesdays I will be in the bar from 7:30-9:30 doing music and humor and on the weekends (on alternating Friday and Saturday nights from 6:30-10:30) I am playing/singing acoustic music, covering the likes of Jimmy Buffett, Beatles, James Taylor, Cat Stevens, etc., as well as a lot of new pop radio stuff. For complete dates, surf to my website ebilly.net and click on "gig schedule."

I am voting the Ralph Nader, Green, populist party for president. I have never, ever publicly divulged what party I belong to (I belong to no one!) and this stuff is normally too boring to even share. I wouldn't want anyone following my lead anyway. Yet, if you are sick and tired of nothing but politics and pandering and rhetoric, you should at least check out this party (Start at www.ralphnader.com).

I am so far away from the liberal-minded environmentalist that I thought this group represented, but they are really about bringing power back to the people instead of our country being run by corporations. And that's what we are as citizens, like the frog in the frying pan, not realizing he is being boiled, we need to wake up as a collective congregation of people and realize Big Business is running the country as well as the two candidates most people will vote for in this election.

I had a pleasant experience this week. I had written a piece about customer service weeks ago on Office Depot. I had a great meeting with one of their managers (Beverly). I really got the feeling that they are concerned about customer service. She assured me that my incident was an exception. Whether or not that is true, I give them credit and applause for the effort. Because, that is what we all want, just some effort. I would never expect a company to be perfect or for there never to be mistakes made, but it is all in the attitude. I think that is how we all feel.

As much as I love movies, this summer has been a bad one for anything memorable. As filthiness has been masquerading as comedy and everything else has pretty much fallen flat, going to the movies has been more about an excuse for me to eat chocolate than anything else. A bright spot was "The Exorcist," though. I read the book when I was barely 14 and saw the movie right after that. Now to see it again, was a great rush of nostalgia. The weirdest thing about it was the clothes they wore were perfectly fashionable to today's standards (if you can call them that).

Enough blathering.

Back to Opinion Home Page | Back to the top of the page