A Change Is Gonna Come

 Out of an abundance of curiosity, I decided to Google "Megamentary." What the brain trust of Al Gore's Internet was able to tell me was that a "megamentary" is a large scale documentary, in scope, subject matter or running time. If you were interested in Francis Ford Coppola's creative process during the making of his passion project, Megalopolis, you could watch Megadoc, to get a flavor for just how big things could get if you spent one hundred twenty million dollars of your own money to make a film that no one else wanted to see. 

Which is all well and good, except I was looking for some sort of clue about the new organizational plan for the Oakland Unified School District. Earlier this summer I attended a meeting with cohorts from all the other elementary schools across The Town to get a peek at what the coming school year had in store for us. In a word? Megamentary. 

This was the solution that the powers that be came up with after budgets were once again slashed and a whole passel of folks were let go. This is not uncommon in the education biz, but for a change this purge did not come at the expense of those in the classroom. After bending to the demands of the teachers' union this past spring, OUSD found themselves in a bind. They were honor bound to give teachers a raise, but the slack had to be taken up somewhere. 

Like that thick layer of middle management that had been a question mark for several years. Fifty-three elementary schools were divvied up into three groups, each overseen by a "Network Superintendent." Instead of fifty-some schools to watch over, each of these administrators had eighteen-ish. Each one of those schools had a principal, and often a vice principal or two. And over all of this layer sat a superintendent for the whole district. 

So, the word from on high was essentially to cut out the middle, and leave it to just one person to watch over all those disparate institutions, and that word became Megamentary. 

Now it makes sense, right? 

Except as of this writing, the district's web site still maintains a page for all those intermediaries. In a month and a half, we're all going to roll back into school with the same enthusiastic need for guidance that we have in previous years. On her way out, I asked our former Network Superintendent if Megamentary was an Autobot or a Decepticon. In a refreshingly candid answer, she suggested that it was more of a Voltron kind of thing, with smaller robots joining together to make one big robot. The day after that I learned that she had taken a job at another district as Superintendent, leaving me to wonder how we will all know how to join our various pieces together when the time comes. 

Megamentary. Sure sounds cool. I wonder how it will work. 

Interruption

 What if there was no cable TV?

I know. It sounds like a bad dream, but it happened to me. For real. 

There I was, minding my own business, enjoying the morning after my sixty-fourth birthday when I made the somewhat mindless gesture of turning on the television to keep me company while I got ready to continue my day. When I was greeted by a message on the screen that read, "This channel is unavailable. V58." A chill ran down my spine as I began to wrestle with the vision of hours of my summer vacation slipping away as I dealt with tech support issues. 

I have lived through these trials before. Many were the times I have spent dangling on a telephone line as someone from a distant locale attempted to unscramble the wires that bring my dopamine release system. Attempting to head this fate off at the pass, I restarted all the machines that are responsible for bringing video entertainment in to my home. There was a message on our Tivo screen that let us know that some elements would be eliminated soon from our service, and this made me fret that our tried and true TV digester was somehow the problem. I fought off the idea of a world without a digital video recorder. As much as I comprehend a future in which all video is on demand and storing things on a magnetic disc is so incredibly 1997 that I wrestled briefly with the thought of ditching this piece of hardware for good. 

Only briefly.

Because when I found that our Internet connection was still happy and viable, I checked for outages in my area that might be affecting my level of contentment. The customer service lines were no help, nor was the app that had so helpfully reminded me earlier that day about their gratitude for my regularly scheduled payment of far too much money to not have to think about what happens when I turned on my television. 

Historical perspective: I can remember having to tune in stations that came through the air like I was operating a shortwave radio. Rabbit ears enhanced with strips of tin foil are a part of my memories. I can remember being offered the option of watching upstairs on the black and white TV that could be rolled into the kitchen or downstairs on trays placed around the color set. I remember when stations would end their broadcast day and for several hours in the middle of the night there would be no television. 

No television? 

Please. I'm old. I can't take that kind of threat. 

By the time lunch was finished and I had begun making plans for the rest of the day without anything to watch, service had been restored. Reruns and news shows and movies and channels that I continue to pay for without ever looking at were once again tumbling into my living room. And bedroom. 

And into my full heart. 

What a ridiculous story. 

Roy G Biv

 It's Pride Month. June is when LGBTQ+ contributions to the world are celebrated. 

This makes a lot of people uncomfortable. This has always been the case since it started, with marketing folks figuring it's another opportunity to sell mattresses and T shirts. Baseball teams hold Pride Nights to show their continued support of the gay community in their area by putting rainbows on things like hats and jerseys that they were going to sell anyway, but these will show everyone who is not LGBTQ+ how comfortable you are wearing something that you might have worn anyway but this one happens to have a rainbow on it. 

Of course, if these jerseys or caps were given away free to players to wear during games that were held to celebrate Pride Month, there might be a few of these players who would object to being "forced" to wear something that so obviously goes against the grain of their personal beliefs. And manhood. Such was the case in, of all places, San Francisco where a group of players chose to scribble bible verses on their caps in order to protect them from the cooties that would no doubt seep into their skulls from wearing the rainbow-infused logo. After a stern warning from Major League Baseball, the players in question went back to their business which involves wearing a lot of tight pants and patting other players on the fanny. 

That's when the Department of "Justice" stepped in. The Second Trumpreich seems committed to ignoring the pedophile in charge while inserting themselves into any and all other potential miscarriages of "Justice." In this case, it seems that the DOJ is investigating a violation of players' religious rights for scribbling the bible verse on their caps. The verse in question is Genesis 9:12-16 which reads, 12 And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come: 13 I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. 14 Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, 15 I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life. 16 Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth.”

I am not a bible scholar, but I can read. To me, this verse suggests that all god's creatures, "every kind," are bound together by the sign of the rainbow. I don't think that the rainbow is mutually exclusive for Giants fans or young men who are so insecure about their masculinity that they can't wear an alternative logo on their baseball caps for one night lest they start showering together. 

Not that showering together makes one LGBTQ+. Of course, wearing a cap with a rainbow on it probably doesn't either. 

Steps

 Sometimes I think stepparents get a bad rap. I suppose we have those Grimm Brothers and Walt Disney to thank for that. 

Then again, I have seen plenty of examples where, as they were trying to find some port in the storm, newly separated people make terrible choices when it comes to finding a new life partner. What seemed like such a good idea when you were dating turns out to be a terrible plan when it comes to plugging it into a family dynamic. 

Especially when it comes to the kids. 

The new dad shows up hoping to fit right in, but without making any adjustments to his life. He just figures that if it were good enough for the courtship, it's going to be good enough for the long haul. If the new dad in question is an authoritarian and hopes that his word will be the law in his adopted household, things can get unpleasant very fast. 

For example. 

Like the first time the kid crosses new dad and the dad decides the only way to deal with the situation is to ground the kid. And take his allowance away. Which is a pretty nasty trick because as it turns out, the money that was supposed to be for the kid's allowance didn't come from new dad, it was from the money old dad had set aside. Now new dad is using that money to take his buddies out on the town, buying jet skis the kid will never ride. 

And so on. 

Okay, now I've set the stage I can tell you that I am creating a metaphor. I believe the former game show host currently occupying the White House that he has converted into his own private Dave and Busters is the "new dad." Whatever sweet nothings he may have whispered into America's ear during campaign season have all been tossed aside for the abusive relationship in which we now find ourselves. Our allowance is being spent on gold lions and American Flag blue sealant that peels off the bottom of the reflecting pool days after we spent millions of dollars to "fix it." 

Oh, and stepdad's a pedophile. 

Bargain Hunting

 Hey guys! Great news! I just won the lottery. 

Yes, you read that right. I will be paying the state of California three hundred billion dollars.

So, doesn't that seem ridiculous? 

Not if you're a convicted felon whose mental facualties are slipping as fast as his approval numbers. If you can explain to me how opening the Strait of Hormuz, which was open before we started blowing things up in Iran, is a selling point for this "deal," please feel free to explain. The memorandum of understanding details exactly how much each side is giving up, and though I notice a "promise" on Iran's part not to create any nuclear weapons, there is nothing in this document that A any kind of assuranc beyond a diplomatic pinky promise. Which, according to the "very stable genius" who signed our copy of the understanding is okay because, "If I don't like it, if they don't behave, we'll go right back to dropping bombs right smack in the middle of their head."

And doesn't that make the rest of this months-long distraction from the Epstein Files feel like it was worth it? Three hundred billion dollars could fully fund Universal Pre-K for all American children for about 15 years, construct thousands of miles of high-speed rail, or provide over nine hundred dollars for every single person in the United States. Or it could go back into the pot of money that we said we didn't have for USAID. For fifteen years. 

And so on. 

The war itself cost, in long term effects, one trillion dollars. So, I suppose in that case this "peace plan" is a win if it only costs us three hundred billion dollars. Which also seems like a bargain if you're a deranged orange psychopath trying to stay out of jail. 

Annual

 I don't want a cage match on my front lawn. 

Nor do I desire a parade. 

I used to tell anyone who would ask what I wanted or my birthday the same thing: Plastic toys. Mind you I began giving this answer after I had reached the age of eighteen. The flaw in this plan was that once I became a father, the stream of plastic toys was necessarily split between myself and my son. 

Lately, I have been the very happy recipient of Lego sets from none other than the lad with whom I used to have to share action figures. I feel very seen. 

Starting nearly a year ago, my lovely wife set out to discover just how dear it would be to rent a cottage on the Isle of Wight. This being a somewhat limited time offer since I will only be turning sixty-four this one time. Many thanks to John and Paul for putting the idea out there.

So, what do I want for my birthday? 

The comfort of my family. The closeness of friends. A place to put my head at night. Memories of all the plastic toys that my wife will dutifully point out are still someplace slowly decomposing and will surely outlast me and those memories. 

But I suppose the most realistic answer is actually the simplest one. What I want for my birthday is another one. 

Bad Reputation

 I am not what you might call a "joiner." I tend to assiduously follow the assertion made by Groucho Marx who said, "I would never be a member of a club that would have me as a member." Groucho made this case when he turned down a membership to the storied entertainers' group, The Friars Club. This did not keep him from attending the occasional party, especially the celebrity roasts held frequently by this showbiz consortium. 

I joined my high school marching band for essentially the same reason Groucho hung around the Friars Club: for the laughs. 

When I started playing tuba, it was with the intent of being part of its somewhat legendary offshoot, the Pep Band. This required that I be part of the marching band, since membership to the Pep Band was limited to those who played a brass or percussion instrument and were a part, in good standing, of that larger ensemble. Having charted my older brother's path on a similar trajectory I understood that there was a faction of that bigger group that existed, known at that time as "the band baddies." These were individuals who took up a position just outside the emotional center, known as "the band goodies." This worked well in my mind as the acronym "BG" made it easy back in the late seventies to create a distance between myself and anyone called Bee Gees. 

Showing up in early rehearsals with the same last name as my brother who served as drum major in his senior year but never bothered to cowtow to that inner circle, preferring instead to lead from a distance that kept him from joining what he rightly felt was a bit of a cult, with the band director at its center. I traced much of that same trajectory when it was my turn to put on the uniform and walk in step, always with the intent that this was my way of being in the Pep Band. 

I have written here on occasion about the experience of being in the "cool part" of a group that was not considered cool. There was a level of acceptance that I enjoyed by being part of that bigger group that allowed me to have that team feeling that others get from playing varsity sports. I gave my all to the paramilitary program that our band director was laying out, but I kept my distance from the sycophants who spent their free periods in the director's office. 

Instead I kept my distance, hanging out in the practice rooms down the hall. I realize now that this distance seemed like a safe one, but it only kept me mildly insulated. I can see that I was not the daring rebel that I presumed myself to be. I was there to play in a band. On occasion I marched in step with those next to me in straight lines, just for the chance to dress up in costume and play music much faster and louder than we might and for just a while, we weren't inside the lines. 

As noted previously, I didn't make it to the end of my senior year as pep band president. As it turns out, the faculty and staff of my high school had a pretty effective way of shutting me down. I wasn't really in charge. I just got to spread my band id around for a while until things got uncomfortable. In my later years I wonder if I couldn't have just gone along and stuck with the program. I don't mind when a Bee Gees song gets played in my presence anymore. I'm proud of the years I spent in band, in and out of line. 

I guess I wasn't that bad after all.