Mika Brzezinski bikini pics?

Da Tech Guy has a sick, twisted imagination. If Rule 5 is matter, Mika Brzezinski is anti-matter.

Why is it that, no matter how often the Savonarola of the right-wing blogosphere tries to lead by example, some of you evil-minion wannabe types need to be told things like this?

If you want to see first-class evil minionship, check out Nice Deb, with her super-fine photo of Pimpin' James and Kenya the Ho.

Let's face it, James O'Keefe is the biggest Mack Daddy who ever turned a girl out. And Hannah Giles . . . Dude. If Hannah's all about the Benjamins, Mika Brzezinski is all about the nickles and dimes.

What does Da Tech Guy have in common with ACORN? They're both nuts.

Da Tech Guy disses me, so naturally Jim Treacher don't give me no respect:

I was going to say something a bit saucy about Hannah Giles, but she's a black belt and her dad is a big-game hunter. So I'll just say that fearless investigative journalism has never looked this good.

Right. Like I never looked good. But when I was Hannah's age, Jimmy Carter was president and the unemployment rate was nearly as high as the inflation rate, but neither was as high as the interest rate. The only thing I was interested in investigating was how to sneak into my girlfriend's dorm room.

Hannah is involved in an organization called Young America's Foundation. Back in 1980, I was involved in a very popular youth organization called Garage Rock Band, which had at least three different chapters on the campus of Jacksonville (Ala.) State University alone.

Al Gore hadn't invented the Internet yet. A computer was something the size of my '72 Dodge Dart and was operated with little IBM cards that said "Do not fold, spindle or mutilate." So it's not exactly my fault I wasn't an overnight celebrity when I was 20.

If I'm beginning to sound like my father explaining to me what it was like to grow up on a dirt farm in Randolph County, Alabama, during the Great Depression, OK. Used to be, conservatives believed in traditional values.

Which was why I was never a young conservative. Baby, I'm the greatest musical has-been that never was:

I come up hard, baby, but now I'm cool.
I didn't make it sugar, playin' by the rules . . .

James O'Keefe is 25. When I was 25, I was making $5.25 an hour driving a forklift in a warehouse on Fulton Industrial Boulevard in Atlanta, trying to save up to buy a P.A. system to start my own band.

Haywood's Recording Studios in the West End had the best deal on eight-track time ($25 an hour, not including reel-to-reel master or cassette duplicates). So an eight-hour session cost more than my after-tax paycheck from two 40-hour weeks, and I worked as much overtime on that forklift as I could get.

The band . . . ah, well, it never turned out to be what I'd hoped. We practiced a lot, played a few parties, a few free outdoor concerts, but the guitar player and the bass player were more into their girlfriends than they were into the music. One day at practice, it all finally blew up, and it was just me and the drummer left. But I guess I've told most of that story before.

Nowadays, my old P.A. speakers are in my 16-year-old twin sons' bedroom, part of a makeshift guitar amp setup powered by a Marshall head. because the one boy thinks he's James Hetfield one day and John Frusciante the next. Whatever. He's no Steve Gaines. The other boy prefers acoustic. But they've been playing for three years, and I never even started playing guitar until I was 16. So who knows?

This afternoon, I dialed the phone number of a guy I was sure had forgotten me, but I was wrong.

"How could I ever forget you, man?" Haywood Tucker said. "You had some good tunes."

He's living in Mableton now, and runs his pro digital studio out of his house. We talked about the old days, and he remembered meeting my wife years ago, after I'd finally given up the music and started a family.

"Wow, I guess your kids are about all grown up now?" I asked. Yes, he said, and boasted that his daughter seems to have inherited his musical talent, writing songs for top groups. I told him my oldest was 20, junior in college, planning to be a teacher.

"That's good -- we need good teachers," Haywood said. I explained that both my boys play guitar, but lot more like Metallica than the kind of funk-rock fusion I was trying to get back in the '80s.

He congratulated me when I told him I'd been working as a Washington journalist for so mnay years, and I said, "Well, it's OK, I guess . . ."

It was a "blessing" to hear from me, he said, and at one point in our conversation, he said, "Well, the Lord knows who you are. Don't worry about all that other stuff."

Really, why should I worry? Still, I asked him if, next time he and his family said grace, they'd mention my name. You can never have too much of that.

UPDATE: The O'Keefe/O'Toole error noted by the copy desk commenters has been corrected.