150 years. What does that even mean? How old is he already? Any prison sentence beyond ‘life in prison’ is meaningless. Unless you’re going to miraculously prolong his life: ‘we will spare no expense to ensure that the man who ruined your pension and savings will live longer than any of you . BUT he will be in prison.’

Life sentence or death. Make up your mind. Why should we need to subject anyone to ‘consecutive life sentences?’ Unless you’re going to kill Bernie Madoff, then reanimate him, then kill him again, then bring him back as a zombie, then create an avatar of Madoff so that the avatar Madoff has to watch as we kill the zombie Madoff! And then we kill his family! … actually this idea has merit.

I just want the money back! It’s not like we don’t know where it is. Get hbs wife up on the stand. His kids, I don’t care. Whatever money is left, try to rebuild the lives that you ruined.  In fact…

What good is Madoff in jail? Make him go back to work! Make him earn another $50 billion and pay it back! Make him single-handedly kick-start the economy. Imagine the effect that would have on the banks and lenders… if we could read the headline: Madoff repays $50 billion. NOW he can go to jail.

Or just sentence him to consecutive 150-year sentences or some bullshit, watch him go to some minimum-security lock-up and walk in 5 years.

Booooooooooooooooooo.

Can anyone take any pleasure in this perverse outcome?

I just saw Lewis Black last night in Carré (he is the standard bearer of polical standup in America). Black condemned all Twitterers by saying ‘IF YOU CA WRITING ABOUT WHAT YOU ARE DOING, YOU ARE NOT DOING IT. )

But he himself had an i-Phone. I can’t wait until my old contract is up.

G

1 I am almost 2 meters tall. I reached my current height at age 12.
2 I was conceived by teenage parents in the Summer of Love, 1967.
3 I was born in the month between the assassination of Martin Luther King & the assassination of Robert Kennedy.
4 When I was 1, I lived in a ‘free-love sex pad,’ where my mom & dad shared partners with my dad’s cousin & his wife. After both couples broke up, they swapped partners, & I grew up with my mom and my dad’s cousin.
5 The first time I remember I was allowed to stay up late was in 1975 for Saturday Night Live.
6 I have a big, brown birthmark on my left wrist.
7 I grew up in Chicago during the filming of ‘My Bodyguard,’ ‘The Fury,’ and ‘The Blues Brothers.’
8 I moved to the suburbs and lived in Evanston, IL during the filming of ‘Risky Business,’ ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,’ & ‘The Breakfast Club.’ I was not in any of them.
9 I was nominated for Homecoming King.
10 I have matching scars on either side of my eyebrows from the upper and lower jaws of a German Shepard, whose tail I pulled when I was 5.
11 I’ve been told that taking LSD more than twice makes you legally insane. I have done it at least 5 times.
12 I had an aunt Nita who died in a fire when I was 4.
13 I had my tonsils out when I was 7.
14 I am circumcised, which is I think is nice.
15 I always used to fantasize about my life in the Year 2000, which ended up featuring my marriage and the birth of my first child – the best year of my life.
16 The moon spoke to me once, as it rose, full, over Lake Michigan. That’s when I knew I had to get out of Evanston.
17 I once got so drunk at a friend’s house that I vomited all over a) her basket of clean laundry b) her computer keyboard & c) her, while she was on the toilet.
18 I taught English to Vietnamese immigrants in Uptown Chicago after college, but I inevitably disappointed them by not marrying their daughter.
19 I will never be a sports fan for any team but the Chicago Cubs. Yet the Dutch national team comes close.
20 I became a Dutch citizen between the assassination of Pim Fortuyn and the assassination of Theo van Gogh.
21 I sometimes fantasize about having a third child, but I’d rather make my wife write her book.
22 My first experience in a theater featured a character, who entered with a puff of smoke, causing me to run screaming from the building.
23 My first experience at Disney World featured an exhibit called ‘Trip to the Moon,’ which simulated a trip to the moon. I was escorted from the theater after persistently screaming ‘I don’t want to go to the Moon.’
24 I was 2 years behind John Cusack in high school and 1 year behind David Schwimmer in college. I sometimes wonder if I could reach that level of success, but the fact is I’m afraid… that people that successful aren’t that happy.
25 I am supposed to be writing a column on Barack Obama right now.

There’s a guy who wants you to wear a pair of mobile phone/glasses so you can see Google Earth everywhere you go. And all of a sudden I start feeling like a real child of the dusty 20th century. ‘Who would want that!?’ is my first reaction. I have a hard enough time navigating with the TomTom interface. (And so do most taxi drivers in this town.) So now, when I want to tell my driver he’s going the wrong way, I have to look into his Google Earth shades? No thank you!

Or does this neanderthal attitude make me a luddite loner who is destined to send mail-bombs to Steve Jobs?

I admit it! I’m a late-adaptor.  But not a non-adaptor. There is progress.
More on that in the next post.

-g shapiro

Since Inauguration Day last month, President Obama has had quite a Honeymoon with the press. He probably has another week left to save the world before the US press tears him to shreds. But in Holland, the Honeymoon continues. According to the Dutch press, ‘It is impossible to make fun of Obama.’ (I say ‘Yes we can!’) But with Holland so in love with Obama, it’s fair to ask: ‘Is Obama Dutch?’

- Some of Obama’s ancestors trace back to the Pilgrims of Leiden from the 1600s. Yes, when your brand of religion is too extreme even for the Dutch, you move to America. Of course – judging by ancestors – half of Obama’s are Muslim. Just like Holland!

- When Obama was 4 years old, his nanny was a Dutch woman named Ans Michels, who now lives in Nijmegen. Also, Obama has admitted that – in his youth he smoked marijuana (and unlike Clinton, he did inhale). There’s no proof that Obama got his weed from Ans, but do you think a Dutch girl went to Hawaii in the 60’s NOT to get high? While Obama shows no signs of following Dutch drug policy, he does a personal addiction to sending emails by ‘Crackberry.’

- Obama likes meetings. When reporters ask for specifics on topics from Guantanamo Bay to Cabon Trading, and the answer is ‘We’re having meetings.’ This is Obama at his most-Dutch. Dutch people love meetings. Ask a Dutch person how he feels about meetings, and he’ll tell you: ‘I don’t know. First, we have to schedule a meeting about meetings, and then the meeting, and then a post-meeting meeting to see how we felt about the meeting about meetings.’

Is Obama really Dutch? You’d have to ask Dutch people. And then wait for them to have their meeting.

On the 20th of January, America gets a new President, and the whole world will breathe a sigh of relief. They will then hold their collective breath to see if Obama can actually fix any of the enormous problems left behind at the White House. As the symbol of America, it’s a bit of a ‘fixer-upper.’ Dutch people still congratulate me on having a new president who can actually speak English, but they always follow up with pity for Obama. Can he really solve all the world’s problems in the first 100 days? According to Obama: ‘Don’t hold your breath.’

Obama may not be able to perform miracles, but the cynical Dutch are still hoping, ‘yes he can.’ I was doing onstreet promotions for Comedy Central with a life-size Obama and a life-size McCain to see who would pose for a photo. The McCain figure looked pretty good. But they did some odd photo-shopping with Obama: he was wearing an odd shirt & tie and an awful suit from the 90’s. Even so, Dutch people went for Obama 90% of the time. Not just posing for a photo, but talking to him, coaching him, praying for him. The Bible says not to worship false idols, but Dutch people were literally worshipping a cardboard cutout.

Clearly, it would take a miracle for Obama to achieve everything he promised. But – as my Dutch wife points out – he already performed one miracle just by winning.