Tuesday, July 18, 2006

W on the World Stage

W is representin' quite well at the G8 summit. Well, he's representin' for the uncouth frat boy/embarassing drunk uncle at Thanksgiving dinner demographic, anyway.

While talking to Tony Blair, he said "shit" around his mouthful of buttered roll into an open mike. That one's not so bad in my book, really. It speaks volumes about the man that it's about the level of decorum we've come to expect. At least he didn't get Blair with the old "see food!" thing. That would have been worse.

The gaffe that sealed it for me, though, was his fly-by shoulder massage on Angela Merkel, chancellor of Germany. This has been a peeve of mine forever. You're sitting at the table, or at a desk in the library, whatever, and a friend comes up behind you and squeezes the life out of your trapezius muscles. After peeling you (all right, me) off the ceiling, the friend huffily says, "I was just giving you a neck massage." Okay, here's the deal: all the cumulative stress of the past almost-39 years marches straight to the traps and establishes residency. They are rock hard, and as much as I'd like to credit all those reps of upright rows for that, it's a pathology and it fucking hurts when somebody digs their thumbs into them ("digs" here meaning "touches").

Ahem.

Given that, I think W is lucky that Merkel only flung her hands shoulder-high in a startle reflex, rather than burying her butter knife between his eyes.

It is, however, still pretty damn funny reading about it on the Bild.de website. "Bush: Liebes-Attacke auf Merkel!" If you read German, take a look. The fotogalerie captions are priceless.

Later today at G8: W calls the hotel staff to ask if the mini-bar is running.

1 comment:

Homer said...

That shoulder touching thing is just creepy.