What's Just Above The Subtext?

 Okay, this may feel like misdirection from me, but I believe that it doesn't matter what is in the Epstein Files. This protracted game of hide and seek has gone on long enough. The most recent revelation that Elon Musk and Prince Andrew appear by name in flight and call logs connected to Jeffery Epstein's island east of Puerto Rico. Invitations were extended. Did they accept? What about Steve Bannon and Peter Thiel? 

Can we please stop referring to Jeffery Epstein as "American financier" and start calling what he really was? A child sex offender. 

And what about the convicted felon auditioning for the role of Yertle The Turtle? I have grown oh so tired, so very very tired, of waiting for "proof" that this capriciously flawed individual did something awful. All of this supposed "smokescreen" of sending the National Guard into blue cities and ICE thugs roughing up a woman who was pleading for them to take her and not her husband isn't the distraction. 

It's the plan. 

The widely held belief that the "president" is a pedophile counts yet another strike against this morally bankrupt serial abuser of women and children who has countless lives on his way to the big time. Now, instead of ruining one woman's life at a time, he is able to do it to an entire country. Entire swaths of the population of the United States have been cut off from the lifelines they so desperately need while he continues to decorate his tacky nest in the style best described as maximalist. 

His clown car of a cabinet continues to find ways to make the American Dream a nightmare for those not fortunate enough to live among the one percent. Vaccines are for sissies, and so is that new kickoff rule in the NFL. The Federal Communications Commission, which should be safeguarding Americans' right to free speech is busy taking requests from the Orange Emperor as to which jester should be silenced next. 

If you can afford to put gold cherubs over every doorway in your rental house, then you probably don't care how much groceries cost. If you're busy making your way to New York City to watch the Ryder Cup, you can't be bothered with negotiations to avert a government shutdown. 

And the parade of political enemies that are being brought to "justice" while the tattered remnants of the United States Constitution lies at the feet of the MAGAts who finally got what they wanted way back on January 6, 2021.

Sure, we can continue to hold our breath and wait for the moment when the "truth" about the adjudicated rapist and Jeffery Epstein, or we can start working on what comes after the worst mistake the American electorate has ever made. And start clawing our way back to being the kind of nation we want to be. Not just the one we deserve. 

Sooner Or Later

 If you're not up on the politics of Oklahoma, the first thing I should assure you is that if you have been aware of events across this great land of ours for the past year or so, you won't be shocked. Some of you may be familiar with Ryan Walters, the former Superintendent of Oklahoma Public Schools. You might remember him from such hits as, "So there were nude women on my office TV. So what?" Or how about, “We have schools that are teaching kids to hate their country, that this country is evil. You have teachers unions pushing this on our kids… look, this is a very uncomfortable truth, but we cannot allow our schools to become terrorist training camps.” And you may have missed this one: "So we're last in the country in education. Somebody has to be, right?" 

This is the guy who wanted to put bibles in every Oklahoma classroom. 

Not content to be simply stirring up mess in the Sooner State, Mister Walters has decided to take his show on the road. He surprised his bosses and the rest of the state by abruptly resigning as Superintendent in a nationally televised address that came as a shock to locals. The local Fox affiliate offered up their studio to film Walter's appearance and then were denied the opportunity to interview the fleeing former superintendent as he rushed from the building. 

Where was he heading? 

Why off to see about creating “an army of teachers” who will attempt to destroy teacher unions, of course. This announcement came just shortly after Mister Walters' edict that every high school in Oklahoma would be expected to host a chapter of Turning Point USA. Administrators were told that if they did not form a chapter in their school, they would be "violating the law." Exactly what law that might be was not immediately clear, nor was the path Ryan Walters set for himself after creating the punchline for the rest of the country's schools. This is the guy who insisted that teachers coming from "places like California and New York" take an ideological purity test to weed out the wokeness. His vision of becoming the next governor of Oklahoma took a hit when early polling put him in the back of a pack of other candidates. 

So why not get yourself an army of anti-woke teachers and prepare to do battle with ideas like evolution and slavery and climate change and just about anything that doesn't square with the "Christian ideals" in his fever dreams? 

And if it starts to put you in mind of certain other conservative firebrands who make loud plans and pronouncements about how things would be and then shrink back into the mist when it comes time to implement draconian economic policy or resolve conflicts abroad, ultimately it's all just sound and fury, signifying nothing. 

That last bit I learned from a public school teacher. It comes from a play about a brave Scottish general who receives a premonition from three witches that he will be crowned King. You may not be familiar with it if you're in Oklahoma, or some other like-minded land where stories that include witchcraft are banned. "It is a tale told by an idiot." 

The Clap

 I appreciate a good practical joke. I will admit right up front that I enjoy them most when I am not the target. Still, the execution of a truly inspired bit of shenanigans often leaves me weak with laughter, but more often when the jape is truly inspired I have a different response: The Slow Clap. Please, if you are unfamiliar with this trope, please take your time with the preceding link, since it will perhaps give you some insight for what I am about to lay on you.

The Slow Clap of the Year goes out to the facilities manager at the UN Building. There are plenty of ways that things could gang agley in a property as immense and filled with history as the headquarters of the United Nations. Located in the Turtle Bay neighborhood of Manhattan, this structure had stood in Midtown for more than seventy years, standing as a monument to the triumphs and challenges of the world's efforts to, well, Unite. 

Which brings us to last week when the convicted felon and subject of the Epstein Files who likes to pretend that he is the "president" of our country showed up for what we have come to call Hell Week in New York, previously known as UN Week. I did not arrive at this rebranding lightly, since the adjudicated rapist used his opportunity at the podium to rail against the assembled leaders of the world to insist, “I’m really good at this stuff. Your countries are going to hell.” At this point he was addressing immigration, but it could just as well have been denying climate change or Tylenol. Eventually he got even more specific, calling out London's mayor, Sadiq Khan: "I look at London, where you have a terrible mayor, terrible, terrible mayor, and it's been changed, it's been so changed," he babbled. "Now they want to go to Sharia law. But you are in a different country, you can't do that."

And if that was the moment that someone backstage decided to pull the plug on his royal bloatedness, then it would have been quite the prank. Or perhaps upon hearing this and the rest of the usual ravings of this "very stable genius" the folks who work hard to keep the UN humming decided to lay in wait for this blundering oaf at the escalator, awaiting his eventual exit. And once he set his girth on the bottom step, they turned it off. Incapable of moving his considerable bulk up or down any incline in a safe manner, he was trapped. 

To this, I say "bravo." And while we will all have to endure the investigation into what the twice impeached best friend of Jeffery Epstein called "triple sabotage," I would like to start us all off in a round of measured applause, building to a crescendo. 

Release the Trumpstein files. 

No One

 On Wednesday morning, I woke up ready to read the headlines about what Jimmy Kimmel said upon his return to the airwaves the night before. Was it a triumph? Was it an apology? Was it circumspect? 

I couldn't rush to the tape because there was another headline that got in my way: "Multiple Fatalities In Apparent Sniper Attack On ICE Facility."

Oh boy. 

So frustrating when real life intrudes on the world of entertainment. Initially there were reports that two ICE agents were killed and two more were seriously wounded. Authorities on the scene said that the shooter was found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Then it turned out that it wasn't two dead, but just one. Not an ICE agent, but one of the detainees. The critically wounded were not agents either, but two additional detainees. 

I would say "more on this story as it develops," but it seems that these two events, a late night TV host returning from a week-long suspension for airing his thoughts about a right wing radio host's murder and the death of a detainee at an ICE facility killed in a similar fashion to the way the radio host was murdered are all just a part of the way we are currently conducting social change in the decidedly not United States. 

Alan Berg.

That was the name that popped into my head. He was a radio host in Denver back in the 1980s. The views Mister Berg expressed on his show were on the opposite side of the ideological spectrum from Charlie Kirk, but like Charlie his audience was made up with as many fans as haters. On the night of June 18, 1984 Alan Berg was shot at point blank range with a semi-automatic handgun that had been converted to fire like a machine gun. He was hit twelve times. Five of those went directly into his heart. He was pronounced dead at the scene. 

One of the men convicted of killing Alan Berg was released from prison in 2024. He has been held up as an example for all Christian Nationalists who have come in his wake and considered by many to be a martyr for the cause. 

My biggest concern now is the need to continue this process of generating martyrs. It's the worst thing about being a martyr: you don't tend to lead a quiet normal life to become one. Most often you have to be surrounded by violence and death. Usually your own. It is an ugly, terrible business. 

Jimmy Kimmel is not a martyr. He said in his return to TV that he wasn't. Nor was Tyler Robinson, the alleged killer of Charlie Kirk. Neither Richard Scutari or Alan Berg are martyrs. Nor are they punchlines to anyone's social media posts. Or blog.

I leave you with this, my continuing pitch: No one deserves to be shot.

No one. 

Son Rise

 Arnold is an angry young man. He came to us that way. He has a lot of company in that category, as we seem to attract them here at Horace Mann. Which is, from our perspective, not necessarily a bad thing. We have a history of being able to turn some of that negative energy around before we send them off to middle school. This is certainly our hope with Arnold, since we have watched his steady evolution from his first eruptions in Kindergarten and first grade. 

Over the past few years, we have been giving him tools and confidence to help him avoid situations and circumstances that might eventually bring him to the principal's office. Redirection, we call it. Redirecting him from the potential consequence of being sent home.

Arnold is officially Arnold Junior. Arnold Senior, dad, has been hanging around the edges of parental involvement since his son first showed up. He has inquired about becoming a volunteer for three of the past five years. What keeps him from following through in spite of our repeated attempts to get him more involved, as is his expressed wish, is the commitment he is putting into the process himself. 

Instead, we see him each time Junior's progress stalls and we need him to show up to help deescalate a situation. Violence or threats of violence are where the buck tends to stop. When dad shows up after being summoned, we tend to go through the same set of questions: What happened? Who did this to him? Did you punish the other kid or kids? 

Then we go through the standard answers while Arnold Junior watches his father attempt to negotiate the reality with us. Often both of the Arnolds will complain and wonder why it is that the younger one "can't defend himself." Which is most certainly not the reason for the discussion. 

It was during one of the most recent iterations of this dance that I found myself watching Junior as Senior fussed about the involvement of other kids. He was watching his father do the same dance that he had done for the past five years. It was apparent to me that Junior had moved on from this base level of defense, but was happy to have his father come up and argue on his behalf. 

Arnold is smarter than his father. 

This realization was both sad and encouraging. When the smoke cleared and assurances were made that the focus of all this interaction was to keep all the kids, including Arnold Junior, safe, we went ahead to make some next steps. These were generated primarily with Arnold Junior, as Senior tried to make sense of it. There would be no beatings. Or suspensions. We were going to use this as a point of departure. Moving on from a rough patch, of which there have been much fewer each year. 

Each Friday when we send students home for the weekend, we hope that the two steps forward we have taken with them don't become three steps back. Even a three day weekend can upset that balance for some kids. The inevitable creep toward becoming a responsible adult. 

And maybe, just maybe, before Arnold leaves us, dad will come along for that ride. 

Just Cause

 Nothing says "memorial" like preparing for war against a bunch of nerds who either weren't able to get their novel published or couldn't figure out what to do with that social work credential. 

Steve Bannon, late of everybody's favorite "misogynistic, xenophobic, and racist"(checks notes) "news" organization, Breitbart and current host of the podcast called (back to the notes) "The War Room," has set his sights on teachers. 

Because the job wasn't challenging enough. Steve B took his time in the pulpit at Charlie Kirk's memorial to point out that not only are Charlie's “throwback ideas,” such as “young marriage” and having “lots of children. are not popular on college campuses right now." Then he went ahead with, "look, from kindergarten all the way up, they are essentially, you know, a third of the teachers are terrorists that are trying to form them.”

How insightful of Steve B to conclude that thirty-three percent of the teaching profession is actively attempting to indoctrinate the children of America into their antifa ranks. It is our way of exacting revenge for the ridiculously low wages and fourteen hour work days. Nothing gives us more pleasure than that moment when one of our kids stands up in class and shouts, "Death to America" before heading on down the hall for gender reassignment surgery. 

Steve B: “Particularly young men who have been told, ‘You’re bad, you’re everything evil, you’ve gotta change, we have to change you, we have to give you drugs.'" 

And just in case the danger wasn't prescient enough, he insists,  “Charlie Kirk is a casualty of war. We are at war in this country." 

As a side note, the reason Mister Bannon is no longer in the employ of Bretibart: He had a rather public falling out with the convicted felon who just happened to be headlining the Charlie Kirk Memorial. Apparently all they really needed was a just cause to bring them back together again: Going to war against those terrorist teachers. 

Timed Out

 My wife and I were initially confounded by the television in our bedroom. After years of dutiful service, it was taking little appliance breaks during afternoon and evening TV binges. For twenty to thirty minutes it would go dark and not make a sound. The little red light in the lower right hand corner that would assure us that there was power blinked lazily as if sending a message to anyone who happened to read Morse code. Not a skill my wife or I have. 

Then, as if caught in an embarrassing faux pas, our broadcasting day would resume as if nothing had happened prior. "What's that? Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't think you were going to want to see that last bit. Go ahead and lean back, relax, and we'll get back to the show." 

"Yeah, but we couldn't wake you up with the remote control or anything."

"Oh? Sorry about that."

"We even tried unplugging you for a minute or two."

"Hmmm."

"Then we plugged you back in and that little red light was still blinking away."

"Gee. How do you figure that?"

Well, since we don't live in a world of completely sentient home entertainment just yet, that dialogue never really occurred. Instead, we called our son, who has forgotten more about TVs than I have learned in my entire adult life. "It's the solder in the connection to the power. When it gets hot, it shorts out. Once it cools down it comes back on."

Oh. 

"You should get a new TV." 

Oh.

Maybe we could ask the TV for a second opinion. 

Veil Of Ridiculousness

 Jimmy Kimmel was suspended "indefinitely" for his comments about the murder of Charlie Kirk. 

Release the Epstein files.

The House and the Senate left for a week's recess without providing a stopgap for government shutdown.

Release the Epstein files.

Kristi "puppy killer" Noem released a video of ICE goons rounding up US citizens set to the music of Nirvana.

Release the Epstein files. 

The sitting, and I do mean sitting, "president" of the United States visited the United Kingdom and referred to our country as being "the hottest."

Release the Epstein files. 

The sitting, and I do mean sittng, "president" of the United States continues to wear poorly matched concealing makeup on his often bruised right hand.

Release the Epstein files. 

Conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine continue despite assurances that these wars will be solved in "twenty-four hours" by the sitting "president," and yes I do mean "sitting."

Release the Epstein files.

The sitting "president" believes the new NFL rules for kickoffs are for "sissies." And yes, the "sitting" still applies.

Release the Epstein files.

Prices for just about everything continue to rise even as the "president" continues to sit.

Release the Epstein files. 

Approval ratings for the most sitting "president" ever continue to plummet.

Release the Epstein files. 

With all of the ugly headlines obscuring the view of the obvious, wouldn't it make sense to do the right thing and release the Epstein files?

Hey look! The sitting "president" lost another lawsuit. 

You Know What's Really Funny?

 I believe the thing that bothers me the most about the fascist takeover of our public airwaves is the wave of rationalization that has accompanied it.

"No one was watching late night anyway."

"It was a business decision."

"When was the last time you watched a late night talk show?"

I haven't watched any of The Gilded Age, but that doesn't keep HBO from rubbing my nose in it day in and day out. The main thing we can learn from this example is that the multi-tentacled beast that owns HBO isn't afraid of any possible kerfuffle arising from the incisive political commentary from the late nineteenth century. 

Then there's the little matter of John Oliver, who routinely points his confetti cannon of satire in the direction of the White House. We can assume that his job is safe until the Warner-Discovery-Beast decides to assimilate with some other communications blob and they start looking for ways to make a sacrifice to the powers that be. 

In this instance, it's the Federal Communications Commission. I leave it to you to come up with funny three words for the acronym FCC, but it seems over the past few months their mission has changed from that of protecting the listening and viewing public to attempting to spare the insanely fragile ego of the artist behind Jeffrey Epstein's favorite birthday card. Jimmy Kimmel is the latest sacrifice to this pitiful business that only seems content when everyone is just as grumpy as the seventy-nine year old adjudicated rapist. 

Not everyone agrees with Jimmy's take on the Charlie Kirk murder. I didn't care much for Faux News Celebrity Idjit, Brian Kilmeade's "hot take" on how to deal the homeless: "just kill 'em." I could offer up all sorts of context for how such an awful thing could creep from the food hole of this babbleboy, but it stands as a much harsher example of how to say something truly regretful on television than anything Jimmy Kimmel said. 

Faux News continues to broadcast its own version of how to keep your license to broadcast, while Jimmy Kimmel has been banished from the airwaves, following the path of Emmy winning late night host Stephen Colbert and Big Bird. 

At the end of this mess, I would love to report that all of these shenanigans have been some sort of Machiavellian ploy to get America to start watching TV again, but alas, I think we're all too entranced with The Gilded Age to change the channel. 

Sides

 Things have a way of going missing. My wife, though she has at least six pairs, loses her glasses with alarming frequency. Luckily she has someone who can be trusted to scour the house, yard, car and other potential hiding places to bring them back. I would like to provide this same service to those of you who went to the Department of Justice web site looking for a recently released report on domestic terrorism. 

In the wake of the murder of Charlie Kirk, conservatives have been falling over themselves to point out that the shooter in this particular case was a liberal. Kudos to the investigative minds who made this connection, and just a dollop of shame on those who may have wished that this was yet another instance of a radicalized Neo-con with a manifesto. Tyler Robinson's motivations were pretty clean cut, allegedly having texted his partner, “I had enough of his hatred. Some hate can’t be negotiated out.” And there it was. The "hate" speech. The convicted felon at the top of The Trumpstein List said, “The radical left poses tremendous violence, and they seem to do it in a bigger way. They’ve caused a lot of problems for this country. I really think they hate our country.”

Which is why the National Institute of Justice had their January 2024 report scrubbed from the DOJ website, the one that starts, "Militant, nationalistic, white supremacist violent extremism has increased in the United States. In fact, the number of far-right attacks continues to outpace all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism." Over the course of thirty years, the study found that far right extremists committed more than two hundred acts of terrorism resulting in the loss of more than five hundred lives, while far left extremists were involved in less than a quarter of those kind of events with a body count of less than eighty. 

"Bigger way?" 

Not according to the Department of Justice, or at least not until they decided to try and hide those numbers. By declaring "war" on antifa (anti-fascists for those etymologists in the room) the convicted felon is attempting to create a false equivalency between hate in the name of MAGA and hate in the name of, well, antifascism. So the suggestion that hate is bad and killing is bad and we should all stop is lost in the myriad of fingers pointing to the opposite side. Some hate, it seems, can't be negotiated out. 

Independent

 There was an argument made a while back about how driving an electric car wasn't really solving any problems because the electricity needed to make the car move was still coming from some coal burning power plant just up the road. It was, at best, a sum zero equation. All the more reason to keep pushing that envelope until everyone has an electric car and solar panels to generate the go-volts needed. 

My wife and I were more than a little chagrined to discover that the company that had done such a great job putting us squarely on the path to energy independence, Solar City, was owned by cousins of (checks notes) an Elon Musk, who "generously" relieved the financial stress that company was feeling by absorbing it into the Tesla Borg. Back in 2016, this felt more like a customer service issue since we had become familiar with our Solar City rep and were able to call him up to ask questions or request support when we needed it. Suddenly we were tossed into a Tesla bin that required us to run a gauntlet of "help" that was geared primarily toward getting us to purchase an electric car. A Tesla. Surprise, surprise. 

Fast forward a couple of elections and we found ourselves confronted with the "new and improved" (checks notes) Elon Musk, "presidential pal." Suddenly all the forbearance we had been willing to extend to the nominal supplier of our widow to the sun was all but blotted out by the insane rantings of the first and "best" oligarchy bro. Fortunately for us, by this point we had become familiar with the vagaries of our system, and the last vestiges of our relationship was the loan we had almost paid off to another financial institution and the annoying logo attached to the app that monitors our solar capacity. 

Just before the inauguration of the Second Trumpreich, we bought our electric car. In that tiny window between the future and the past brought on by the backward facing MAGAts, we received a generous rebate from the government to make the deal even better. We were a sustainable household with the somewhat regrettable exception of our gas furnace. 

Incentives were swallowed up by the climate deniers and the fossil fuel lobbies. We were subjected to rants about the evils of windmills and the inability of solar energy to work at night. We watched as the progress we had made was being swallowed up behind us. We waited for ICE to show up and throw us into detention for not using enough gasoline. 

The future is still out there. The rest of the world continues to move forward into it. China has lead the way, with solar now becoming cheaper than coal, and the price of solar panels and installation is creating jobs and helping grow their economy. The world, outside 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, is looking to follow that model. 

Meanwhile, Elon (checks notes) has recently purchased billions of his own company's stock, creating the illusion of value in the wake of the past year's hijinks. All of which brings to mind one of my favorite Bruce Springsteen quotes: Nobody wins unless everybody wins. I'm not guessing (checks notes) Elon Musk is a big fan of The Boss. 

The real Boss. 

Bye Bob

 Sadly, my wife and I came up with a bit a few years back that pretty much destroys every Twilight Zone Episode. At the end, when we find out that things were not as they appear and Rod Serling has given us all some nasty twist (i.e. they were on the Earth the whole time) the soundtrack announces this trick with the Sad Trombone sound. 

It's a pretty good bit. 

Unfortunately, this trace of levity is what stood in my way from completely appreciating the moment I learned that Robert Redford had died. I was quickly going through my mental list of performances by the Founder of the Sundance Institute when I had a full and visceral memory of the episode of Mister Serling's sci-fi series in which Robert Redford played a wounded policeman stuck outside an elderly woman's door, begging her to let him in. After much back and forth, she lets him in, confiding that she has been staving off her own death for many years now and is afraid of being tricked by the grim reaper. And wouldn't you know it, the wounded cop turns out to be the embodiment of death, come to take the old woman to her final reward. 

That one stuck with me as much as Barefoot In The Park, or Downhill Racer, but not as much as Butch Cassidy or The Sting. Probably more than The Way We Were or The Great Gatsby, but never more than The Great Waldo Pepper, which I first saw with my family at Radio City Music Hall on Easter Sunday 1975. And then there was Ordinary People, in which Mister Redford didn't even appear. He just won an Oscar for Best Director. That one hits differently for the film buff in me. Bob beat out Martin Scorsese who directed Raging Bull that same year. Apparently he was pretty good as a director too. 

Robert Redford's Sundance Foundation helped launch the careers of such diverse talents as Kevin Smith, Quentin Tarantino, and Steven Soderbergh. All that time as a movie star paid off big in terms of the influence he was able to wield in the world of independent film. Movies like Little Miss Sunshine, Donnie Darko, and The Blair Witch Project all got their premieres at Sundance. 

And somewhere in there, he even found himself playing a part in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. 

He stomped on the cinematic terra, and he will be missed. Aloha, Robert Redford, you made movies better. 

Stay

 Love it or leave it. 

Those were the choices we were given, once upon a time, via a bumper sticker to those of us who were having difficulty aligning ourselves with the vision of America's involvement in Vietnam. In my mind's eye I can imagine that once upon an even longer time ago there were stickers affixed to the back of coaches and horse drawn carts in England encouraging those who resisted the King's taxation to "Submit to His Majesty or Flee These Shores."

Since there was this nice big empty land mass just across the pond, that's what many folks chose to do. In the intervening two and a half centuries the available inhabitable real estate across the globe has been filled up with groups of people searching for their own place in the sun. I will cite as an example of such a challenge the case of a group of German expatriates who fled their homeland after World War I in search of a place they could found their own New World. The story of how wrong this experiment went can be found in the little-seen Opie Cunningham film called Eden.  This may have been Opie's way of making up for his involvement in another of his little-seen films, Hillbilly Elegy. 

I digress.

Finding a place where you can pursue life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness outside of the place where it has been an advertised going concern has not gotten any easier since the war in Vietnam. I find it quietly amazing that the flow of immigration into the Somewhat United States remains so very high. We have the largest foreign born population of any country, both in absolute numbers and as a percentage of our total.

See? I just said "we." And "us." Because you can't spell US without it. In spite of all the vitriol and xenophobic tirades being thrown around by people who have their own show on Fox News, people seem invested in finding their way to this country. 

Our country. Land of the free. Home of the brave. Inventor and chief purveyor of Taco Tuesday. The land of hope and dreams. 

Sometimes they really do come true. 

Recollecting

 Watching movies about kids in high school makes me wistful for those days when I used to have wild parties when my parents were out of town. Or the time I challenged the head of the ski team to a race down Dead Man's Hill. How about when the new English teacher tried to seduce me and my friends? Boy, those were the days. 

Except none of those things happened. Not to me, anyway. There were hints and allegations, as the poet said, but most everything that took place during those three years were your standard issue adolescence. I heard about parties in the woods, but I never attended. My parents welcomed my friends into their home and we respected them and they respected our privacy for the most part once we headed down to the basement. Where we mostly played Atari and ping pong, ate some pizza,  and imagined a time when we would all have dates. 

Eventually my friends and I, all of us members of the marching band, found love or something that resembled love. And we believed that our lives were as impossibly complex as anyone else's before us. Every Friday night was a chance to achieve greatness. Every Saturday night could be the stuff of legend. When Monday rolled around again, we commiserated about what might have been. What should have been. 

And what never was. 

It felt like the most important time of our lives, and maybe it was. Even though none of us ever won a drag race, or kidnapped the Homecoming Queen. I did steal a stop sign. I rode my bike home with my jacket draped over it under my arm. The cops didn't catch me. Not that they were interested. We played our music loud, but not so loud that anyone got yelled at by a neighbor. Nobody spent a night in jail. Richie Cunningham got to hang around with the Fonz. We just hung out with each other. Most of us were up to being Richie in that pairing, but none of us could make the jukebox start up by banging it just so. 

But I did fold one of the records of the double album of the Grease soundtrack in half. Shards of which were handed out as souvenirs to guests lucky enough to have been at that particular party. That gave us all something to talk about while we waited for something really exciting to happen. 

Something they might make a movie about one day. 

We

 It was more striking than usual for me to reflect on the wistful feeling I had on this past Thursday. Remembering September 11, 2001 I found myself recalling those all too brief moments when the country gathererd together, United States. We had been attacked and We were in mourning. We were trying to find our way in a darkness that had not been felt for sixty years. Congress, United, stood on the steps of the Capitol and sang. Together. God Bless America. Indeed. 

It was not long after that we began to split solidly down the middle. We went off to war with some lingering doubts about who we needed to catch and subdue for those heinous acts that briefly brought our country to its knees. For nearly ten years we had troops fighting in Iraq where there were no weapons of mass destruction, just unfinished business on the part of the man whom I referred to as "Pinhead" for most of his two terms as "president." It wasn't until his successor, Barack Obama rode into town that we finally caught the guy responsible for planning the attacks on the World Trade Center. Nearly ten full years after the towers came down, Navy Seals brought Osama bin Laden down. 

For a fifteen minute period, there was a national catharsis. Folks celebrated ever so briefly before rushing back to their blue or red corners. During this time, conspiracy theories were fast and thick in the wave of a new stage for interaction we called "social media." Internet access allowed us to point fingers and hurl invective as we made up stories to suit our convictions. This blog sprang from that era. 

Twenty-four years later, the fissures that have only widened since that moment have raised the question of Civil War. Couldn't we all just get along? Recent events suggest that we are moving closer to the brink of an actual shooting war here on our shores than we have been for a century and a half. Historians suggest that America was far more divided back in 1861. I am not an historian, but I find this a little hard to imagine. The "radicalized" shootings of our fellow Americans make that difficult to digest. 

Meanwhile, the convicted felon at the top of Jeffry Epstein's list seems uninterested in doing anything on his part as "president" to bring the country back together. When I say "seems," I mean that he has said so. On TV. In front of people. On the TV network that he uses as his bully pulpit. When asked by the fawning sycophants on "Fox and Friends" how he might attempt to bring the country back together, “I’ll tell you something that’s going to get me in trouble, but I couldn’t care less,” he said.

Fourteen years ago, Barack Obama asked Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner to come along with he and Joe Biden for a round of golf as budget negotiations had stalled. I don't expect that Chuck Schumer will be getting an invitation to the links from the former game show host anytime soon. 

Additionally, if I believed that calling our current "president" by name would actually make any sort of difference between the two sides, I would consider it. As I wait for a sign, I'll be keeping my wits about me and keeping my head down. 

Stay safe, America. 

Taking Your Shot

 The media is referring to the young man who shot up his high school last week as the "Radicalized Evergreen Shooter." 

The suspect in the shooting of Charlie Kirk will have his social media connections scoured to determine his affiliations, but I suspect that he will also be labeled as "Radicalized" but by different schools of thought than his brothers in arms in Evergreen. 

The owner of a pawn shop in Oakland who shot and killed two of the five men who tried to rob his store will probably not be labeled in the same category as those other gentlemen. 

As an elementary school teacher, suddenly my mind fills with Venn diagrams. Where do these men's lives intersect? How were they different. Obviously, the intersection for all three is their capacity to take a life with a gun. Two of them used handguns. One of them used a rifle. Two of them were under thirty when they killed. One of them was older. One could be argued that he fired back in self defense. The other two were shooting unarmed victims. 

But the intersection of those three circles is still the same: Killer. Much will be made over the coming weeks and months of the varying political and social views of at least two of these shooters. Pawn shop owner in Oakland? I'm just going to posit a guess that he's a supporter of the Second Amendment but given the geography he might be voting blue. The kid in Evergreen ended his shooting match with a shot through his own head, so we'll be left with his  posts and links to give us a fuller picture of why someone would show up at their high school ready to kill. If the suspect in the murder of Charlie Kirk lives long enough to stand trial, then there may be more opportunities to learn about what makes a killer do that thing that they do. 

He was a loner. Kept to himself. We never would have suspected him. Did they own a gun? That might be a great place to start. Not many of these stories start with "I really wanted to kill somebody, and as luck would have it, there was one just laying around in the street." Putting guns in the hands of people who have a will to use them is the gateway to a world of hurt. Charlie Kirk believed that this was the "price we pay" for living in a country with the Right To Bear Arms ensconced in the Bill of Rights. Going to school, running a business, or having a freewheeling discussion on a college campus are not constitutionally protected. This is the challenge, since some of these things like Free Speech and life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness don't get the kind of buildup that the tools for killing get. 

Now that people seem to be taking shots at conservatives, it could be that things might change. The object of Charlie Kirk's adoration spent his visit to the Yankees game behind a very solid sheet of bulletproof glass. Wouldn't it be a nice place to live where bulletproof glass became obsolete? 

Do You Hear What I Hear?

“He’s been one of the most divisive, especially divisive younger figures in this, who is constantly sort of pushing this sort of hate speech or sort of aimed at certain groups. And I always go back to, hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions. And I think that is the environment we are in. You can’t stop with these sort of awful thoughts you have and then saying these awful words and not expect awful actions to take place. And that’s the unfortunate environment we are in.” This was how Matthew Dowd of MSNBC chose to describe the death of Charlie Kirk. Mister Dowd was fired from his job for his on-air comments and his bosses issued an apology: “During our breaking news coverage of the shooting of Charlie Kirk, Matthew Dowd made comments that were inappropriate, insensitive and unacceptable," the statement said. "We apologize for his statements, as has he. There is no place for violence in America, political or otherwise."

That was how the left wing of our Fourth Estate chose to deal with the matter. 

For posterity's sake, here is a funhouse grab bag of just a few of the thoughts that the late Charlie Kirk chose to express with a microphone in front of his face, often with cameras rolling:

"The higher the building, the more liberal the voter  - conservatives live closer to the ground."

"One hundred million people were murdered in the last century under the banner of atheism."

“Maybe God spared Donald Trump’s life to test his church. Let’s be honest, the American church is a joke in this country. It is a church that is filled with cowards and people that call themselves pastors, but are really motivational speakers wearing skinny jeans with new sneakers that run ‘Ted Talks’ with rock concerts with organized parking and good coffee. If that offends you. Good.”

"I think that there are two sexes, zero genders and unlimited personalities, and what we used to call a personality disorder, we now call a gender disorder that we treat with body treatment when it should be brain treatment."  

"Having an armed citizenry comes with a price and that some gun deaths are unfortunately worth it to preserve Second Amendment rights."

In light of that last sentiment, it should be noted that when Mister Kirk was shot through the neck, he had just finished pontificating on his views about gun control beneath a tent that was emblazoned with the challenge: Prove Me Wrong. 

I would like to close by reiterating my opinion that I do not believe that any person deserves to be shot. I would agree that there is no place for violence in America. Political or otherwise. 

I'm not sure anyone is listening to that. 

Here Comes The Sun

 Taking a break from the continued assertive mess that erupts daily in Washington, I turn to the events at my school. 

Where I work. 

Last spring it was announced that we would be getting solar panels installed on our playground. A contingent of men in orange vests descended up on our yard to measure things and spray paint a rainbow array of dots at various points where we could only assume things would be built, buried or blocked. Then, shortly after our school year ended, a chain link fence was installed, marking the territory that would be given up for the construction. 

Summer school opened, and for another month, the fence and the spray painted dots were the only sign of progress on our project. 

When I say "our project," I am assuming some tacit connection to the work that would be done on behalf of the place I have called home for three decades. 

When the first day of school rolled around, so did the tractor trailer trucks. They carried heavy equipment and materials needed to create a large free-standing solar array on one end of the playground. The far end. This meant that with some frequency, kids who were outside playing tag or soccer or just wandering around during recess were asked to make a path for the big men and their big trucks. With no real consideration for the bell schedule and the daily goings-on at our school. 

I reminded myself of the pain visited by having contractors swarming around one's home or business. They were on their timeline. Not ours. Anything we could do to expedite the process was in our best interest. 

"Our best interest" is an interesting stretch of a term. I mean the school which is getting solar panels. I mean the school district who paid for the project to be done. I mean the contractors who were dispatched to see that it all came together in such a way as to maximize the need for all those spray painted dots. And as a taxpayer, who was engaged at some distant level for the financing of all this action.

Then the action stopped. One of my colleagues spoke with one of the iron workers who let slip that the wrong size of supports had been delivered, and they had to be taken down. Two weeks passed without any action or disruption from behind the fence. Then suddenly this past week, the forklifts and drills and hammers were back. Rising like the Martian machines from HG Wells' novel, a great silver construction appeared. In a day, the structure that would eventually hold all that potential solar energy was a reality. 

Students marveled. Some of them even bothered to ask what was going on. "We're getting solar panels," I told them.

"Cool," replied one. 

Cool indeed. 

Logo Change

 Many of us are familiar with the musical essay, composed by Edwin Starr, entitled War. Not to be confused with the funk/soul/rock band who emerged from Long Beach around the same time, Mister Starr asked the question on so many people's minds in 1970: What is it good for?

I bring this up, since those of us familiar with the tune already know the answer, because of the rabid and misguided rebranding of what was up until oh-so-recently The Department of Defense. As the convicted felon and author of the now infamous birthday note to his pal Jeffrey Epstein has done so very often he bypassed any sort of approval from Congress or even a note from Epstein's mother to write yet another Executive Order calling for the change to be made. He followed through on his promise to rebrand The Department of Defense to The Department of War. 

Setting aside for the moment the cost of this logo change, it's in the billions, but instead let's focus on the semantics. Back in 1775 when we weren't quite a nation, the Continental Congress gathered a number of committees together to provide for our upcoming revolution against England. Where were we gong to get gunpowder and fresh horses and the like. In 1789, when we had a nation to govern, George Washington installed a secretary of war, followed over the next decade with positions such as  quartermaster general, chaplain, surgeon general, adjutant general, superintendent of military stores, and paymaster general. All of these became part of a department called War. 

Back in 1890, the United States Army had 39,000 troops, the smallest of any major power. This changed as a new century began and we eventually found ourselves fighting wars in other countries, initially in the War to End All Wars, and then its sequel. Conscription, or a draft lottery, kept the ranks of our military expanding until at the end of WWII the US armed forces numbered more than eight million. The Department of War made that all possible. Much in the same way that the dropping of an atomic bomb on Hiroshima was made possible. 

This was probably the moment in time that caused the initial rethinking of the Department of War. As the only nation to ever use nuclear weapons in war, the thought was to spin the whole thing into something a little easier to take: We were just defending ourselves, thereby opening the door in 1947 for the newly christened Department of Defense. 

Get it?

Now with his royal boorishness on a mission to start a war within his own country, his minions are happy to have stationary that links them to wonton acts of aggression. Pete "Another Round Here" Hegseth was so excited to have the nameplate on his office door replaced that he posted the event on Instagram. Like someone on Facebook being so excited to change their relationship status from "single" to "don't ask." 

Again, none of this turns out to be much of a surprise, since it was all telegraphed through a little binder full of empire building called Project 2025. Counting the National Guard and reserves, our nation's armed forces now totals just above two million souls. Men and women who went to work one day and found out they were working for a different company. They must be so excited. 

What is it good for? 

Absolutely nothin'.

But it's going to cost our country billions of dollars. 

They must be so proud. 

Days Of Future Passed

 Red is gray and yellow white, but we decide which is right

and which is an illusion. ="Nights In White Satin"

If you are not familiar with that snippet from the FM radio version of the classic from  the Moody Blues, it's possible that you have only heard the short version. Those are the words that came bubbling to the surface one morning as I began to address the week in review. 

Certainly there have been plenty of references to George Orwell over the past forty years, and how we have been subjected to Newspeak from the totalitarian regime that has held sway for far too long. The Tea Party. The Pro Life Movement, The Three Leg Stool, and those who believe they have been sent to this world to Make America Great Again. In my view, America has always been pretty great because of the way it tolerates opposing viewpoints. This allows for debate and eventually compromise, sometimes to the level of amending our Constitution. 

That kind of flexibility becomes difficult when fear and hatred become prime motivators. The example that set me on the path of the Moody Blues poetic description of perspective was the intense flurry of nonsense coming from the man whose name was once connected to a celebrated legacy. The dark side of the Kennedy family history is on full display in the actions of Robert F Kennedy Junior. The junk science that is being forced out of his Make America Healthy Again springs not from research but from unfounded concerns and misguided research. Most recently, the man who confessed to having a worm in his brain insisted that Tylenol causes Autism Spectrum Disorder. This speculation has been debunked through several studies have found no link between acetimetaphin and autism. Studies by scientists. Now this same suggestion is being made by the MAHA (sound like a clown's horn) folks, putting Tylenol on a list that includes most vaccines. 

Red is gray. 

Covid cases have begun to rise again as Florida has eliminated all of its state vaccination mandates. 

Yellow is white. 

Arizona is currently battling the worst measles outbreak in more than a decade. 

And who is deciding what is right? 

Robert F Kennedy, a recovering heroin addict with a law degree and no background in medicine is trying to tell us what will make us all healthy again. 

This is an illusion. 

The Fatterland

 When I opened my browser to Yahoo the other day, what should appear across the top line but an ad, sporting the face of confessed puppy killer Kristi Noem, urging me to Defend The Homeland. 

Why do I suddenly feel the urge to burst into a chorus of "MAGA Uber Alles?"

Actually, I don't. Nor do I hear the siren's call to the rocks. I will not be joining the jackboot thugs who are solidly behind the mass deportation of immigrants. I will not cover my face in a mask and shove innocents into unmarked vans to whisk them off to god knows where. I will not become a pawn in the game of Whose Life Is This Anyway? 

The DHS web site would like you to hear the stirring speech from the puppy killer: “Your country is calling you to serve at ICE. In the wake of the Biden administration’s failed immigration policies, your country needs dedicated men and women of ICE to get the worst of the worst criminals out of our country.This is a defining moment in our nation’s history. Your skills, your experience, and your courage have never been more essential. Together, we must defend the homeland."

And just what do we have for our contestants, Kristi? 

• A maximum $50,000 signing bonus

• Student loan repayment and forgiveness options

• 25% Law Enforcement Availability Pay (LEAP) for HSI Special Agents

• Administratively Uncontrollable Overtime (AUI) for Enforcement Removal Operations (ERO) Deportation Officers

• Enhanced retirement benefits

That's right, and if you join up now, you can be assured of an audience with Satan himself once you've signed away your mortal soul. Some, like Dean "I Used To Be Super" Cain have already subjected themselves to the rigors of this intensive training, assuring an appearance soon enough at the Gates of Hell. 

Homeland, Fatherland. Haven't we already fought this war? 

Tradition Of Attrition

 Sherman's March to the sea.

The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 

These are days that will live in infamy, if I may borrow a line from another corner of history. 

When I was in school and learned about these events, I learned another word: Attrition, the action or process of gradually reducing the strength or effectiveness of someone or something through sustained attack or pressure. When General William Tecusheh Sherman tore through Georgia with sixty thousand troops, he and our boys in blue left nothing standing, aiming to demoralize the Confederacy and hasten the end of the war. Likewise the decision by newly minted President Harry Truman to use an atomic weapons on a civilian target in Japan rather than a demonstration of the power available, he chose to wait just three days before detonating a second device on another Japanese city. The rationale historically given was to "hasten the end of the war" and "save lives." American troops' lives. Not Japanese civilians. 

I selected these events out of a myriad of others, including the Allied bombing of Dresden in World War II to remind us all that history is written by the victors, which does not mean that what happened is instantly understood or forgiveable. 

Now I will toss out another word: benevolence, the quality of being well meaning; kindness.There are times when the phrase "benevolent dictator" gets tossed around in an attempt to make the actions of an authoritarian ruler are excused because the autocrat in question is seen to be acting "for the common good." The military takeover of our own cities, the masked kidnappers sweeping our streets in an wild-eyed attempt at immigration reform, the use of the United States military and its weaponry to "obliterate" nuclear programs in other countries or disintegrate a boat suspected of carrying drugs are not acts of benevolence. They are acts of attrition, meant to send fear into the hearts of those who might dare to oppose the current regime. 

If the intent was, to borrow an unfortunate term from another bygone era, to creat "shock and awe," then I suppose the response would be "mission accomplished." If the hope was to unite the country and eventually the rest of the world, I would suggest another strategy. 

Schnitt Fit

 The acting deputy of a Justice Department unit may have shared a little too much on his second date. Especially since the woman with whom he confided was a journalist, recording their chat for posterity. And for showing about on Al Gore's Internet. 

Joseph Schnitt, the DOJ officer in this scenario revealed to his "date" that the government would “Redact every Republican” and “Leave all the Liberal, Democratic People” from the Epstein client list. It would be simple enough to just excuse this as some guy attempting to score points with a woman he met on Hinge. He would not be the first guy to expand and expound on his credentials to make himself appear interesting.

But Mister Schnitt wasn't done. He went on to share that Ghislaine Maxwell was transferred to a minimum security prison as "a benefit." He insisted that it is "against BOP policy because she's a convicted sex offender."

The oversharing continued as Schnitt suggested that there was "internal conflict" going on within the Justice Department. He gave an unflattering picture of the workings of his job, including this assertion about his boss, Attorney General Pam Bondi:  "I don't know what Bondi wants. Bondi wants whatever Trump wants. She's just a yes-person."

In the light of a new day, Joseph sang a different tune. He assured us that if he had known that the young woman "who said her name was Skylar" was a reporter, he would have ended things before the first date even started. He went on to issue the following statement: "The comments I made were my own personal comments on what I've learned in the media and not from anything I've done at or learned via work. I have no knowledge of the circumstances surrounding Ms. Maxwell other than what is reported in the news. I also never divulged anything about what I do at work. I recall that she asked if I had any knowledge about Maxwell and I specifically said I only know what's been reported in the media."

Except like so much of what ends up on Al Gore's Internet, there's a pretty candid video just sitting out there, pointing to counter his denial. Was it just a flex on Joseph's part to try and get a third date? Maybe, but this might be an amusing point at which I can share the Hinge app's slogan: "The dating app designed to be deleted." My guess is that the Department of Justice is requiring that all of their employees do just that.

The Line

 "The stupid store just called and they're all out of you."

This is the caliber of wit being bandied about these days as conservatives try and match the onslaught of trolling being dispensed at the hand of one Gavin "Governor Handsome" Newsom. The   ALL CAPS social media storm has been almost constant for months now. The more bizarre the rant coming from the White House, the more twisted the response comes from Newsom. And every so often, Gavin mixes in just enough truth to keep it real: "DONALD TRUMP LOSES AGAIN," California's troll in Chief tweeted, "The courts agree -- his militarization of our streets and use of the military against US citizens is ILLEGAL."

Add to this relentless tide of pointing a finger right back in the face of the former game show host on top of Epstein's List the steady and ferocious bite of Colorado's own South Park. Some have made the mistake of suggesting that the convicted felon's decision to move Space Command to Alabama has something to do with the allegiance of Tommy "Not Making This Name Up" Tuberville. I believe it is the spite generated by this season's laser focused parody coming from Matt Stone and Trey Parker.

But, getting back to the weak sauce being delivered from the comic geniuses on the other side, we have everyone's favorite Texan, Ted "When The Going Gets Tough, We Cancun" Cruz. In Laughing Ted's Newsmax response to Illinois Governor JB Pritzker telling the Trumpreich and their stormtroopers to stay out of Chicago, he went after Pritzker's weight: “Listen, I don’t want to get between JB Pritzker and the Domino’s Pizza line, but I’ll tell you what I am willing to get between is him and his open doors for every human trafficker, every drug trafficker, every MS-13 and Tren De Aragua gang member." 

I know Ted has been busy fleeing whatever the current disaster occurring in his home state is, but to reference "the line" for a pizza delivery chain is just a poorly constructed bit. He could just as easily have suggested that he didn't want to get between the Domino's delivery driver and JB Pritzker. But he didn't. This is the guy who showed up on Tucker "Mister Podcast" Carlson's show and let the former Faux Newsboy dance circles around him. Something about never letting yourself get into a battle of wits with a guy who used to wear a bow tie all the time. That's okay, I'm sure the next time a fire, flood or blizzard threatens the Lone Star State, Ted will be somewhere out on the road, working on his standup comedy career. 

And looking for that Domino's Pizza line. 

Envy

 The convicted felon at the top of Epstein's List must be so disappointed with his pals Vladimir and Kim. Didn't they say that they wouldn't be friends with the despot in China? They promised. Pinky-swore, I believe. Even though the felon's hands are tiny and bruised, that should count for something. 

But there they were, the three of them, standing shoulder to shoulder in Beijing, watching all that military might pass in review. What's a would-be-king got to do in order to be able to sit at the popular dictator's table? 

The former game show host at the top of Epstein's List couldn't get any of his so-called-buddies from the tyrant club to watch all those squeaky tanks pass by at his big birthday parade. Just his dumb son and his wife and some folks who used to work at Fox News. 

And where were the missiles? Squeaky tanks were fine, but how about some ICBMs on trailers to really put some phallic imagery on display. Say what you want about those communists, but they know how to showcase their guns and ammo. 

Which may explain why the bloated sack of protoplasm at the top of Epstein's List chose to announce that he was about to stage a military takeover of a foreign city: (checks notes) Chicago. The City of the Big Shoulders can't be a U.S. city, since it's where that foreigner Barack Hussein Obama resides. Maybe when the invading armies aren't otherwise occupied with mulching and litter, they can ransack a few houses in a search for that guy's real birth certificate. "We're going in," the cankle model at the top of Epstein's List proclaimed, and like all proclamations from the TACO in chief he added, "I didn't say when."

The element of surprise, it seems, is vital when attacking the third largest city in your own country. Don't give them time to hide their PBS tote bags and clear out the farmer's markets and libraries. Mister Impotent at the top of Epstein's List is on his way to overcompensate. 

Well, he won't actually be there. He's far too busy visiting golf resorts that he owns. That, and pining for an invitation to one of those really big parades. 

With missiles. 

Countdown

 What have I put up with for more than four years? 

College? That took me six.

I lived through it. 

I worked at Arby's for more than four years. I am just starting to get that last layer bit of grease off. But I survived. 

I would like to believe that there is some sort of Nietzschean experiment at work here. What doesn't kill us will make us stronger.

But first it will perplex and frustrate us to the point of extinction. 

I am talking here about the Second Trumpreich. Each new day brings a twist or revelation that makes us, the common folk, echo that line from Working In A Coal Mine: "Well, how long can this go on?" 

Here is where I would like to draw a line between "putting up with" and "surviving." Sadly, there are already far too many folks who were not afforded the chance to live through the second administration of the convicted felon who once hosted a game show. There will be no parting gifts for those who died as a result of having their benefits eliminated, or those who died in ICE custody. The looming specter of those who may perish as a result of the elimination of vaccines or simply pushed off the rolls because they were too old, too poor, too blue to continue. 

How long?

The courts are trying to keep up, but a Federal Judge ruling that it was illegal for Epstein's favorite client to send National Guard troops into Los Angeles a month after they had been sent home or the actual accounting behind the trade wars being started by a guy who managed to bankrupt four casinos that he owned. A guy who insists that cheating on his taxes makes him "smart." 

How long?

What will it take until every single one of the sycophants and minions wake up to the notion that this guy is only working for one person: himself. It has only been eight months. 

Eight exhausting months. 

What's The (Gray) Matter?

 A three day weekend can offer one quite a lot of time to wonder. 

For example, somewhere in the midst of Labor Day weekend, I found myself wondering about that whole switched-brain bit in the 1931 version of Frankenstein. I am certain this came about after I had watched a trailer for Guillermo del Toro's version. I was curious which path Guillermo would take: the abnormal brain transplant or the misunderstood romantic creature found in Mary Shelly's novel. 

I was made aware of this mild Hollywood conceit when I was still quite young. As I was a rabid follower of the Universal monster movies, I was also brought up to read the classics and besides reading the Classics Illustrated adaptation of Ms. Shelly's work, I worked my way through her novel as a pre-teen just like I absorbed Bram Stoker's Dracula and Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. A grounding in the source material was made important to me by my mother, a voracious reader. She was also a movie fanatic, so I was encouraged to wade into all of those nightmares with her blessing. 

But now back to that brain: I was made aware, in an article I found in Famous Monsters Of Filmland, of makeup artist Jack Pierce's inspiration for the flat headed look of the creature when it came time to decide on a look for the 1931 film. He had reasoned that Henry Frankenstein (renamed from Victor in the novel to avoid any trouble with the German haters) would not be first and foremost a clever surgeon. He was stitching together a bunch of corpses, and when it came time to install a brain, the easiest option would be to open the skull like a lid and then clamp it shut. Jack Pierce delivered. Now, how about that brain?

As it turns out, the poet Walt Whitman chose to offer up his brain, after his death, to science. It was hoped that over the course of time, scientists could examine and study great men's gray matter to determine just what exactly made them tick. Unfortunately, when it came time to move Walt's brain from one container to another vessel for safekeeping, there was an accident. Brains, it turns out are actually pretty hefty and quite slippery. 

Oops. 

Of course, Mister Whitman's cerebrum was not destined for the cranium of a meat puppet created by some mad scientist in an abandoned castle somewhere in the hills of Bavaria. It was a cervelle destined for the compost. No need for the hunchback assistant to pull a bait and switch. Just a wet clean up on aisle five. 

Can't wait for Columbus Day to see what I can figure out then. 

Feelin' It

 This past Sunday I awoke with a song in my head. This happens somewhat frequently, but in this case it wasn't precisely a song so much as a jingle. A commercial jingle. I started singing to my wife's confused awakening: "Feelin' Seven Up, I'm feelin' Seven Up." Again, the limitations of a jingle compared to that of a full-length song is that lyrically I could only loop back and repeat how I was feeling, which happened to be Seven Up. 

I can only imagine where this earworm found its way into my Sunday morning, but I suspect it could have been repeat viewings of Alex Cox's Repo Man, which features a scene early where that little bit of pop (pardon the pun) culture is used to affix a level of suburbia to the viewer so from there, all manner of craziness can ensue. For what it's worth, in that moment, Kevin remembers far more of the lyrics than I did on Sunday morning. 

Then I found myself faced with a mild dilemma. I had no idea from where the name "Seven Up" came. So I asked Google, which is kind of surrender for me, but it was Sunday morning, as I have mentioned prior, and I wasn't going to spend the entire day wondering. I was presented with two similar answers, the first being that it described the seven ingredients found in the recipe for the soft drink. The second was that it came from the atomic number of lithium, which was at one time a key ingredient in Seven Up. 

What?

For the majority of my life I have been privy to the "secret ingredient" of Coca-Cola: Cocaine. Long before the sugar and caffeine content was considered the source for the pep one might enjoy from a bottle of Coke, there was an addictive substance in America's favorite soda pop. Concerns about this ingredient caused it to be removed from the family recipe in 1903. 

It wasn't until 1948 that lithium was removed from the Seven Up formula. Up until that time, it was marketed as a mood-stabilizing soft drink with "health benefits." Seven Up was introduced just weeks before the stock market crashed in 1929. Considering Prohibition was still in full swing at that time here in the United States, I'm guessing a bottle or two of Seven Up might have come in handy for those who had just lost their life savings. 

All of this because I woke up on a Sunday morning leaking commercial jingles. And I wonder if we could convince the folks at MAHA to switch our fluoride in our water supply for lithium. "It's a feeling, a lift, and a rhythm in your step." Feelin' Seven Up. 

Feet On The Ground

 “She thinks I’m a fascist?! I don’t control the railways or the flow of commerce!” This is how Barbie reacts to being called a fascist by a group of high school girls. 

If you didn't catch the movie, perhaps being stuck on the horns of the dilemma of which to see first: Oppenheimer or Barbie, I can sense your frustration with my opening. Perhaps you thought the story about the making of the first atomic bomb was about fighting fascism. What was that overtly political quandary doing in a movie about a plastic doll? 

Well, let me set you down easy by saying that both of these movies dealt the the American Zeitgeist and how we have all been affected by the last eighty years. As Barbie seriously ponders how she could be called a fascist, she is culling up images from Mussolini and Hitler, who both took great pride in "making the trains run on time" as well as restricting and controlling the economy. 

That second part probably sounds familiar as "MIster T" (that stands for tariffs) continues to twist and bend the US economy like it was some high school economics class project, trying to find a way to turn making money for himself the focus while bankrupting the country at large. This scheme has been paired with his lust for power, having recently deployed governmentt troops to our nation's capitol ostensibly to battle crime, but actually to pick up trash. 

When Vice President Jo-Jo Dogface Vance, Defense Secretary Pete "This Round's On Me" Hegseth, and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen "Who Shall Not Be Named" Miller showed up last week at Washington DC's Union Station, they were jeered and booed, and called fascists. It was the mocking of these central figures of the Second Trumpreich that brought down the fury of the guy who is just trying to keep us from talking about the Epstein Files. It was the convicted felon that commanded the already deployed National Guard to seize control of the train station, partially obscuring the fact that Joe Biden had made restoration of that historic spot part of his infrastructure plan continuing a process that began back in 1983 via a non-proft organization. Joe, as you may remember, was a bit of a glassy-eyed rail freak himself. 

Which brings us back to Barbie, who made the valiant choice after disrupting the patriarchal takeover of her native land to leave her dream house and come to live in the real world. Her first stop? Spoiler alert: her gynecologist. Here she hoped not to control the means of production, but her own means of reproduction. 

Not an atomic bomb or a massive reworking of our nation's economic plan, but a pretty sizable choice.