John Montgomery Presents This Week's	November 11, 2000	Creep Logo by Alan Fraser
	Election Creeps
	You'll Find My Vote Where the Sunshine State Don't Shine

As the incomparable Slim Pickens remarked in the cinema classic, Blazing Saddles, "I am depressed!"

I'm a strung-out political junkie who didn't get his fix this week. I look forward to election night all year long. I park in front of the TV surrounded by my charts of projected winners, electoral maps with red and blue colors, the list of bets I made with those intellectually inferior bozos, and some fine Italian red wine.

Whenever CNN's Bernard Shaw calls an election or presidential state winner that I predicted, I mark up the charts and maps with the colored markers and then immediately call the poor chump I bet against. In my most taunting, obnoxious tone of voice, I scream into the phone hysterically, "Ha! Your candidate's a loser, you're a loser, and your whole worthless life is sinking into a stinking cesspool of despair! You might as well slit your wrists right after you pay me that $50, slimebag!" Life doesn't get any better than that.

In the rare cases when Bernie makes a call that I don't like, I throw the wine glass at the TV, toss the crumpled up map into the fireplace and let the answering machine take the inevitable phone call. Politics can be a dirty business sometimes. But win or lose, I wake up Wednesday morning, hung over but satisfied, knowing that I've done my part to keep our American democracy intact for another few years.

The first few hours of this week's election night went pretty well. Hillary won her Senate race, so I knew I wouldn't have to deal with an avalanche of gloating email from all those inbred Hillary Haters. Bernie kept calling the big states for Gore, first Florida, then Michigan and Pennsylvania, so it looked like it might be an early night.

I was just totaling up my winnings to determine whether I could finally afford that PlayStation 2 when disaster struck. Bernie got a sheepish grin on his face and said that heh-heh, folks, you know when we called Florida for Gore a little while ago? Well, it turns out we didn't really have any idea what the hell we were talking about! "What?" I howled at the TV, "Bernie, you incompetent bastard! WTF???!!! I had Florida marked in blue ink! You screwed up my whole map!"

I hung out for few more hours, grumbling and moaning, then went to bed about 1 AM. That was a good move because I did not have to endure the calling of Florida and the election for Bush, the Gore concession that never happened, and the subsequent, "No, it's not Bush anymore, and it's not Gore anymore, and God I sure do miss the good old days when we waited for the real results before we opened our big fat mouths."

The rest of the week has been bizarre, surreal and pretty damn frustrating for anyone (like me) who demands some form of final closure about these events. Both sides have sent some extremely unpleasant people to monitor the Florida recount and spin the results for the cameras. George sent James Baker (who I thought was dead) and had his Katzenjammer Kids Karl Rove and Karen Hughes there to remind us of just how truly obnoxious and whiny a Bush administration would be. Al sent Warren Christopher (who I also thought was dead) and William Daley, whose father, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley (who really is dead) could teach an amateur piker like Florida Governor Jeb Bush a few things about how to fix an election and make it stick.

There was confusion in Palm Beach County regarding something called a "butterfly" ballot which seemed to have caused some Gore supporters to vote for Pat Buchanan by mistake. Pat sounded gracious when he said, "I probably got some votes down there that really did not belong to me and I do not feel well about that." Translation: I really don't want any votes from senile, old Jews.

As of this moment, we're still on hold. It'll be at least a week, perhaps longer. George and Al are trying to take the high ground, but they look like two aging boxers in the late rounds, bruised and bloody, ready to fall down at any moment for the final count. Whoever does finally emerge from this embarrassing brawl is going to be punch drunk and unstable for quite some time. And so will the spectators.