So I’m back. From vacation. Did you miss me, my tiny handful of blog readers? (How tiny? In one of my recent posts, three responses came back in from readers: one from my mother in Cincinnati, one from my cousin in Columbus, Ohio, and one from an aunt in Knoxville, Tennessee. Glad to know this blog is making such an impact here in the Tri-state area).

I’ll blog about something more serious later this week, but today I’m going to make you look at vacation pictures of my kids. We go each August to Madison, Connecticut, a pretty town on the shore about 20-minutes past New Haven. My six-year-old twins were determined to go fishing for the first time, so we went to a few different places; a wharf on the Long Island Sound, a state park. And lo and behold, they each caught one!

So without further ado, I present “Luke and Jamie on Summer Vacation.” Thank you for indulging me, dear readers. And if I may communicate directly with one of my fans: Hey, Mom... how cute are these grandsons of yours??!! Photos after the jump.

Gov. Sarah Palin's speech Wednesday night fired up Republican delegates at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota. (Getty Images)

If there were any hopes left that the 2008 presidential election would be the dawning of a post-partisan age in Washington, a time when political issues would trump political insults, they were shattered last night at the Republican National Convention in Minnesota. Insults were the order of the evening, especially from Sarah Palin. The plucked-from-obscurity vice presidential nominee delivered more of a Don Rickles routine than a speech, and I think it’s going to backfire for the Republicans.

Here was a real opportunity to introduce not only a new face on the American political scene, but a new perspective, a new paradigm, even. Who better to guide us away from the hateful politics that have divided our nation these past 15-years, than someone like Governor Palin? A mom, a parent of a special needs child, a charismatic woman and speaker, who’s proved in her limited time in public life to be a mover and shaker, someone from a part of the country almost no one knows. It could all have been so NEW and fresh and hopeful, and I’m guessing many of the 37-million people who watched the speech, almost as many as watched Barack Obama’s acceptance speech in Denver last week, wanted to hear a message with exactly those qualities.

I was going to write tonight about the words and phrases used with numbing repetitiveness over the course of the national political conventions the past two weeks. Let’s run down just a few:

• “Vetting” It’s something that was either done insufficiently with Sarah Palin by the McCain campaign, or something that was overdone by the mean old media. Either way, time to give it a rest.

• “Maverick” The old John McCain label made a big comeback this week. It means being independent in thought and action. The problem is, I don’t think real mavericks go around talking about what mavericks they are. If everybody in the group acclaims you as a maverick, then, by definition, you aren’t one. Interestingly, the other definition of maverick is an unbranded stray calf, that’s considered the property of the first person who brands it. That could be an interesting political metaphor.

• “Hockey Mom” Are moms from every single sport eventually going to be broken into distinct demographic voting blocks? Do you campaign differently with hockey moms than with soccer moms? Are there enough hockey moms to throw the election one way or the other?

• “Elite” It was generally used by Republicans this week as an insult, directed at either the media or Barack Obama. And yet “elite” is defined as “the best or most skilled members of a group.” This is strange. It’s like saying, “don’t vote for him, he’s the best.” Read more after the jump.

“Nobody knows anything.”

It’s one of Hollywood’s most famous quotes, delivered by screenwriter William Goldman, of “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” and “All the President’s Men” fame. The three words were Goldman’s assessment of the entertainment industry, specifically the ability of filmmakers and studios to consistently create high quality, popular films. Goldman was basically saying that no amount of planning, projecting, casting, budgeting, and directing could ever guarantee a successful movie. There are always going to be the sure things that will flop, and there are always going to be the low budget underdogs that will soar. Why? Nobody knows. READ MORE AFTER THE JUMP.

I just watched the beginning of the newscast (the “top” of the show, if you speak newsroom-ese) for ABC’s “World News Tonight,” the open to the show when the big stories in the broadcast are ”teased” for a few seconds before the anchor shows up on camera. For the first time in many weeks, the presidential campaign didn’t make the cut on this newscast preview. Instead, the Wall Street financial crisis, the devastation left behind by Hurricane Ike in Texas, and the aftermath of the horrible commuter train crash in Los Angeles got the nod.

As you can see, I’ve been learning some skate slang, inspired by this insane video you’re about to see. Its now starting to make its way across the web, after a couple of weeks on skateboarding websites. Before it goes totally viral, we wanted you to see a clip on the news tonight, then bring you here to watch the entire video.

Photo credit: Colin Blackshear

By way of introduction, I’ll only say this is Claremont Canyon near Berkeley, California. It was shot completely with a handheld HD video camera, with no special effects, as far as I can tell. Skip the first 2:20 if you want to get right to the action. Then watch one of the most intense and thrilling extreme sports videos you’ll ever see. And, yes, the dudes are actually passing the camera back and forth as they travel downhill at speeds near 60 MPH. Check it out, after the jump.

Hundreds of you came to my blog yesterday to check out the incredible downhill skateboarding video, “Claremont” (after the canyon in Berkeley, California where the ride took place). For details on who these maniacs are riding longboards at 60 MPH, and who made the film, check out yesterday’s post.

I’ve probably watched it five times now, and it puts me in a good mood with every viewing. I’m not sure why that is; my interest and experience in skateboarding is exactly zero. But there’s just something about watching these dudes take this death-defying ride (and laughing about it all the way) that just seemed the perfect antidote to this week of gloomy news. Not to mention that it’s a demonstration of incredible athletic skill. Read more after the jump.

That’s probably my favorite new phrase to come out this long and torturous presidential race. And it’s the reason why I’m not going to blog about the race anymore.

The phrase comes from one of the top advisors to one of the candidates. It means, essentially, phony impartiality by the media covering the race; that while it’s expected that political journalists doing so-called “straight” news, not commentary, be evenhanded to both sides, evenhandedness itself becomes a lie when it prevents greater truths from being told. When the topic is blatant lies being told by one campaign, the symmetry of sin calls for reporters to say, essentially, that the other side does it, too. Even if doesn’t, or doesn’t do it nearly as much. It’s “objectivity” that is extremely misleading.

Damn! I KNEW I should have gotten that Ph.D. in economics. It would sure come in handy these days. While it’s certainly possible to read nonstop about the causes of the current financial crisis and the wisdom or lack thereof for the administration’s proposed $700 billion bailout, I think I speak for many of us when I ask, what the hell is going on? By the way, that’s actually a quote in today’s New York Times from Bruce Bartlett, a former economist in the Reagan administration.

Here’s what he said: “The problem is people are operating in a world in which nobody knows what the hell is going on.” And this guy DOES have a Ph.D. in economics.

A few posts ago, I wrote about the way big news events can push other important stories off the front page and the top of newscasts, and out of the minds of viewers and readers. I didn’t know when I wrote that that such a stark and tragic example of this would be just days away, right here in New York City. Read more after the jump.

So Mayor Bloomberg is going to try and knock down the city’s term limits law and run for a third term. Hmmm... Let’s kick this around for a minute.

Bloomberg’s justification for this is that he, being a super successful billionaire businessman, and all, is uniquely skilled to see New York City through the current financial crisis. Well, yes. And no. Yes, he’s certainly worked Wall Street to his clear advantage in the past. A man doesn’t pull down a sweet $10-billion just being lucky. So he knows the mechanics of it all, at least the mechanics as they once were. Read more after the jump.