Highway Miles

 I chose to close out 2023 with a trip to the doctor. I understand that a lot of folks have regularly scheduled appointments with their primary care physician, but this is not a custom that I have personally adopted. The reason for my visit was a somewhat innocuous but nonetheless odd protrusion from my belly that I had somewhat easily diagnosed as a hernia. All by myself. But since hernias seemed to be off the schedule of what I would consider "healthy," and the periodic need for me to tuck my innards back in behind my abdominal wall seemed to be likewise contraindicated, I made the call. Or more specifically, my wife who is far more experienced with creating and scheduling visits to the doctor than I am found an opening for me later that day.

No time to weasel out. 

No time to decide that it wasn't any big deal after all. 

I went. 

"What brings you in today?" asked the very nice lady we had selected as our family doctor some years ago. I was fully aware that there was a smallish element of concern placed on the relative infrequency of my visits. Much of the information she had gathered over the years came as anecdotal from my wife on her much more regular connections with the health care system. 

I told my doctor about my hernia self-diagnosis, which she asked to see. This made sense since she's a doctor and all. 

After a couple of moments poking and probing, she sat back on her stool. "Yep. That's a hernia."

I prepared myself for what I assumed would come next: lab tests, MRIs, more tests and eventually surgery. "So what do you recommend?" I steeled myself for the next steps.

"Nothing." That's what she said. "Unless it's particularly painful or causing you undue suffering."

I thought about the now somewhat mundane task of putting myself back together, and started to understand that this was going to be yet another in a string of things that had started to wear out on my sixty-one year old chasis. Blurry vision supported by prescription lenses, bifocals at that. Blood pressure maintained by a little yellow pill once a morning. No more Coca-Cola keeps the kidney stones away. The Baker's Cyst that kept my right knee from bending as neatly as it used to. And all the other myriad of pieces and parts that had begun to show wear and tear as I begin my seventh decade on the planet. 

So my doctor and I spent a little more time catching up, talking about my mood and my diet and all the ways my life could be just a little easier if I ate better things or exercised just a little differently. I got all kinds of mad props for being in such tremendous cardiovascular shape, and then I got a few more reminders that this is a package deal and the whole bag of mostly water needed to cross the finish line together. 

I left the office feeling better. Imagine that: Feeling better after a visit to the doctor. 

Mom Always Liked Him Best

 Approaching the end of a tough year for celebrity loss, I bring you the words of Tom Smothers who passed away this past Tuesday at his home in Santa Rosa, California: “It’s hard for me to stay silent when I keep hearing that peace is only attainable through war.” 

Tommy said this at the 2008 Emmy Awards, where he was being acknowledged for his work in television over the course of five decades. When I watched the Smothers Brothers way back in 1968 I had no idea just how subversive they were. They had Buffalo Springfield and The Who on as musical guests. There were all sorts of jokes being made at the expense of the establishment, including bringing Pete Seeger on not once but twice to sing Waist Deep In The Big Muddy. The first time, the executives at CBS wouldn't let it air. So the Brothers Smothers brought him back to make sure America got to see and hear it. And when the rest of the TV establishment was wishing Merry Christmas to the troops overseas, Tommy sent his holiday wishes to the draft dodgers in Canada. 

All of which might have become tiresome if Tommy and his brother Dick weren't also bringing solid entertainment mixed with their anti-war rhetoric. They boasted talent like Rob Reiner and Steve Martin on their writing staff, and they brought us the earliest known sightings of Super Dave Osborne when he was going by the title Officer Judy. 

Oh, and The Smothers Brothers themselves were funny. Very. Years of honing their act in clubs and other people's TV shows made them one of the tightest comic/folk song duos on network TV. Until the powers that be decided they had enough fun at the corporation's expense. That was fifty-three years ago. Tommy Smothers received his Emmy Award thirty-eight years after his show was cancelled. If you look at your television today and see a Jon Stewart, a Steven Colbert, a John Oliver, a Samantha Bee or any of the myriad of topical news-comedians, you can thank Tommy Smothers. 

He stomped on the Terra and gave fits to the network censors, and made the world a more thoughtful and amusing place. He will be missed. 

Aloha, Tommy. 

AE

 There was a lot of discussion around the holiday table this year about AI. Artificial Intelligence, in case your family spent the day singing carols or talking about relationships or recalling happy moments with loved ones over the course of the past year. The culmination of our chat about Artificial Intelligence was a vague unease, but a fascination regarding the future of this new technology. 

Me? Personally I wondered why there wasn't more interest in making the planet a better place rather than forcing Beatles songs into old English. Arthur C Clarke posited that any new technology is indistinguishable from magic, but being the skeptic that I am, I tend to look for the mirrors and strings. 

Which is why I found myself considering how much of a slave I am already to Artificial Intelligence of the most pedestrian kind: I own a watch that counts my steps. I was such a fan that I bought my wife, son and gave one to my mother-in-law for Christmas. Now all of us can obsess on our steps together. That internal competition can sprout wings and become part of our everyday interaction. 

Every day. 

But here's the thing (he said looking for the mirrors and strings): I know that I have been able to walk, run, stumble and ride for miles and miles for years before the advent of this wearable technology. The fact that I am now relying on a number of earth-orbiting satellites to track my whereabouts at any given moment and can tell you with a great degree of certainty how far it is from my front gate to the back yard. Or any of the various and sundry routes that I take in my seemingly never-ending attempt to exert myself. 

There was a time, of course, when I would go outside and run until I was tired, and then stopped. This worked a lot better when I found myself about half as tired as I wanted to be before I turned around. Now with the help of the faintest bit of Artificial Intelligence, I not only know how far I have pushed myself, but I get the cheesy reward of a tiny digital fireworks display along with the words "good job" on my wrist. The ultimate reward being that this machine will then sadistically ratchet up my goal for the following day, so if I'm in need of that twist of dopamine, I'll have to go just a little bit further. 

Artificial Exertion. 

Season's Greetings

  "THEY SPIED ON MY CAMPAIGN, LIED TO CONGRESS, CHEATED ON FISA, RIGGED A PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, ALLOWED MILLIONS OF PEOPLE, MANY FROM PRISONS & MENTAL INSTITUTIONS, TO INVADE OUR COUNTRY, SCREWED UP IN AFGHANISTAN, & JOE BIDEN’S MISFITS & THUGS, LIKE DERANGED JACK SMITH, ARE COMING AFTER ME, AT LEVELS OF PERSECUTION NEVER SEEN BEFORE IN OUR COUNTRY??? IT’S CALLED ELECTION INTERFERENCE. MERRY CHRISTMAS!"

This is how the former game show host and current Republican front runner for his party's nomination for "President" chose to greet his followers on the always ironically named platform Truth. Not for the first time, I considered trying to turn off the access this screeching tangerine has to any portion of my brain. Responding in any way to his messages or his followers is like tilting at windmills. Big, scary, stupid windmills that can't find the caps lock key. Of course, this is a challenging metaphor since his royal wackness insists that windmills cause cancer and kill birds and cause whales to beach themselves.

How will the next eleven months roll with this kind of holiday cheer as a blueprint for the One Day Dictator?

2024 is an election year, and just maybe coincidentally a leap year. That means that unless one of the ninety-one current counts against him lands him in jail without access to a keyboard, we will all continue to hear way too much from this deeply flawed human being for all those days leading up to Election Day. This includes February 29. Three hundred thirteen days. I don't know about you, but I am looking forward to the end of this seemingly endless torrent of spite and malice. I don't know how much more of this I can take.

Wake me up when November ends.

That Moment When

 While I was out on my morning run, I came across this scene: A young man pulled over to the curb, got out of his car, and approached an older woman sitting on the concrete base of a filling station sign. I couldn't hear what they were saying because, as is my custom, I was listening to music through my earbuds. 

They young man stopped abruptly, returning to the driver's side door, opened it and came back out carrying a book. As I passed by it became apparent that the book was a Bible, and the gentleman was about to witness or preach at this elderly woman. 

This took place on Christmas Eve, and I did not stick around to see what happened next since I had a day full of holiday preparations of my own ahead of me. 

My mind was not finished with the tableau, however. I wondered if I had stumbled into one man's mission to save just one more soul before Christmas. Was this an isolated incident, or had he been working tirelessly the entire year and saw this as one last chance for salvation for his heavenly work? 

And what of the elderly woman? Was there an assumption made that her posture and the shopping bag wedged between her feet signified a need to be saved? Was this an interruption to her day or a bit of welcome relief for her empty life? 

It made me consider all the chance interactions that we all avoid each day in a life full of getting somewhere in a hurry. The Bible might not be necessary, but it does provide an opening. I confess that here in Oakland, more often than not, I am zipping through my day avoiding eye contact with the expressed purpose of express. No stopping. No idle chitchat. No interactions with strangers if it can possibly be avoided. 

Some of this agoraphobia is no doubt a result of being the son of a man who seemed to be friends with every living soul with whom he came in contact. I followed up that relationship by marrying a woman to whom I refer as Polly Polka Dot, America's Friend. My guess is that my father or my wife would have had a much different reaction to the scene I encountered this past Christmas Eve. 

I did what I do in my universe: I smuggled that moment home and stuck it in a blog. 

Opportunity Knocks

 If you could go back in time to do things over, what would you change?

That's the kind of moderately rhetorical question that gets tossed around a lot on Al Gore's Internet, and having stumbled over it a few times myself, I confess that I have taken a moment or two to ponder my prior existence. What sort of choices have I made? What do I wish that I had taken the time to do that I skipped the first time around? Did I really want to take the road less traveled? 

Since it's Christmas time, and Charles Dickens is trending, it seems like now would be as good a time as any to reflect back on what those spirits might have me look into had they shown up in my bedroom like they did for Scrooge. 

I know that it's a bit hackneyed to suggest that the sum of all the turns I have taken on my path to sixty-one years are the exact combination that dropped me off here. A flit to the left or a jump to the right could have altered my course and sent me spiraling off in some unintended tangent that might have kept me from being a husband, a teacher, a father. 

Still, there must be some regret that nags at me. Something that keeps me awake at night. What is my "if only?"

Just prior to my twenty-first birthday, I woke up to a rather bleak looking day. Colorado, even in June, can present a serious array of meteorological extremes. This wasn't snow, but a relatively surprising bit of fog, and the potential for additional inclement weather. When the phone rang, I was considering these conditions. A friend of mine had tickets to see a concert at the Red Rocks Amphitheater and would I like to go? 

"Who's playing?" 

"U2."

"Right. The Irish guys." 

I thought about the chance to see a new band. I thought about the challenges presented by the weather. 

"That's okay," I said, "Why don't you see if somebody else wants to go."

The date was July 5, 1983. The concert was filmed and eventually presented as "Under A Blood Red Sky." Their performance on this night of "Sunday Bloody Sunday" was named by Rolling Stone as one of the fifty moments that changed the history of rock and roll. 

I missed it. 

But I stayed warm and dry. 

Sheesh. 

For Her

 Somewhere in a manger

A nice warm bed

a little boy lies awake

wondering about his future

Everything started so bright

so full of promise

and the angels sang

as angels do

There was frankincense

there was myrrh

and even some gold

How could anyone doubt

that this was a fresh beginning

a push of the cosmic reset

what we had waited for

Just down the street

another child lies awake

wondering about her future

Would she be safe

Would she be loved

Would she survive

Would it be Christmas for her?

Do It Yourself Miracle

 A pause here. 

A cessation of hostilities, not unlike that long ago Christmas Eve when soldiers left the trenches and wandered into No Man's Land, looking to share a bit of food and conversation. For a day or so, civility reigned on the battlefields of World War One. Not the "tenuous ceasefire" that everyone would hope and pray might hold through the holiday, but a real halt to the killing. 

I understand that what I am asking here is a bit of a dream. For all the guns to be stilled for just this one night would be asking for the moon. Tensions run high during the holiday season. Stress is brutal as families come together with the hopes of gathering in peace where there has not been any for months. Years. Those that have want more. Those with less want the more that those that have are stockpiling. Those with hope question their own as those without hope are looking for a way out.

As we reach the end of 2023, more than forty-one thousand Americans have died this year from gun violence. That amounts to more than one hundred thirteen men, women and children every single day. Every. Single. Day.

Taking one day off from the slaughter will not affect the bottom line that much, but it would be a gift to us all to know that if we wanted to, we could. We could stop the killing. We could put an end to the suffering not to just the victims and the wounded, but the families and friends who spend the rest of their lives wondering why. 

Why do we need a Constitutional Amendment to tell us how to behave? The sad irony is that the birthplace of the First Commandment is currently experiencing more than its share of killing. Thou shall not kill. Unless you have a really good reason. And a loaded weapon. 

I know that there will be those who argue that they needed to defend themselves. How about for just this one night we try barricading ourselves in our homes instead of looking for opportunities to pop a cap in our fellow man? 

It doesn't take a miracle. It just takes a little common sense. 

A Mile High And Rising

 I was living in California when the Denver Broncos finally won a Super Bowl. Where I lived at that time was not the issue. The issue was that the Denver Broncos finally won a Super Bowl. I felt the stirrings in my Rocky Mountain roots way out on the Left Coast. I had a similar vicarious thrill when, in 2012, the Mile High State legalized the sale of marijuana. It took another four years for California to catch up to that milestone. 

Which is fine, because it takes a village, and if enough of those villages band together they can accomplish most anything. 

Like when I heard that folks in Colorado were trying to get the former game show host and multiple indictment convicted harasser of women and thinking human beings kicked off the ballot for the coming year's presidential primary, I cheered. The initial attempts were stalled at the point where the bloated sack of protoplasm was declared guilty of insurrection, but not in such a way that would preclude him from participating in the electoral process. 

On December 19, 2023, The Supreme Court of Colorado said, "Not so fast, Bankrupt Casino Manager." They declared former "President" Donald Trump ineligible for the White House under the U.S. Constitution’s insurrection clause and removed him from the state’s presidential primary ballot. 

Until such time as this decision will most undoubtedly be ratcheted up to the next highest court, and ultimately to the previously stacked United States Supreme Court where the Constitution has been left in tatters over the previous three years. Imagine a world in which an insurrectionist is allowed to run for the highest office in the land, but women are forbidden from making their own reproductive choices. 

Sadly, I can. 

But for the time being, I am proud to be a Native Coloradan, and I support the decision made by my home state's legal authority. In the words of the Once-ler, "Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not."

Hot Chocolate

 This one has been tough.

There is a tradition of the last week of school before vacation being a  tough one. Teachers and staff are running on fumes while kids are becoming super-energized by the approach of two weeks of existence outside a classroom. 

This year has been more challenging down here at Horace Mann. We have struggled mightily to keep our staff together. Questioning the commitment of our teacher and staff would be the wrong tack to take, but circumstances of one sort or another have kept us from having our full compliment of teachers in their own classrooms for a limited number of days. Our current streak for having everyone on site on time is three days in a row. 

Three. 

The rest of those days have had at least one of our grades impacted by teacher absence. Sickness, funerals, pregnancy, childcare, and an assortment of other adult variants of "I can't come to school today because" have made the past four months a game of Whack-A-Mole. Some days we have substitutes available to fill the void. Some days we don't. Our kids and their families don't know this struggle. They send their kids to school because that's what we have told them to do. 

Behind the scenes, there is a group of us scurrying to make copies and prepare for whomsoever crosses the threshold willing to take whatever class is in need of coverage. In the week before Winter Break, our lineup is struggling to meet the bell. The bell that tells us when to start. And when to stop. 

Meanwhile, we continue to make strides academically. The hard work we have been doing to bring our kids to grade level is paying off in test scores as well as the sense of community that we hope to instill with all our staff and families. It's a marathon, and we're only halfway there.

Which makes this upcoming water station, metaphorically speaking, so vital.

I hope they are serving hot chocolate. 

Never Surrender

 The war rages on.

Not the one in Gaza.

Not the one in Ukraine. 

Not the on in Myanmar.

Not the one in Sudan.

Not the one in Maghreb.

Not the one against drugs.

The one against Christmas.

I am pleased to tell you that, as of this writing, Christmas will continue to be celebrated in and around the United States. I am sure this news comes as comfort to those of you who are still looking forward to yet another Black Friday Sale. Have no fear. Black Fridays will almost certainly continue before, during and after the current fir boughs and holly berries give way to cupids and hearts at your local retailers. Do not, repeat, DO NOT be discouraged by those lefties with their "happy holiday" greetings. This sort of weakness is just what the enemy works so hard to instigate. 

Don't be misled by "statistics" that show American spending around Christmas doing nothing but going up each year since the beginning of this century. That's just a way to placate those who insist that Christmas is all about commercialism. Don't believe it. 

But do believe this: The only to ban Christmas in America were Christians. In 1659, Puritans in the Massachusetts Bay Colony enacted a law called Penalty for Keeping Christmas. They felt that such “festivals as were superstitiously kept in other countries” were a “great dishonor of God and offence of others.” Anyone found celebrating Christmas by failing to work, “feasting, or any other way… shall pay for every such offence five shillings.” 

Which is really going to take its toll on your family's figgy pudding budget. 

Stay strong, 'Muricka. 

Fast Living

 My yardstick for celebrity death used to be my parents. If the deceased was younger than my parents, I figured they went too soon. As I grew older, that perspective changed. Once I had lapped John Belushi and Kurt Cobain as well as a great many of their contemporaries, I started to get a chill anytime someone passed ahead of me. I continue to be, by my definition, too young to die. 

Which is an interesting development for those of you who may have known me back in the days before I got into all this self-preservation business. While I cannot lay claim to ever having a "death wish" exactly, I can say that once upon a time my future was not painted with straight arrows and signs that read "proceed with caution." 

This tended to flavor my responses to those who lived fast and died young. There was a period of time when I didn't quite embrace that notion, but I did celebrate it. A bit. 

Which is why the death of Matthew Perry back in October of this year weighed heavily on my conscience. The old saw about "live fast, die young and leave a good-looking corpse" didn't quite pay off for him. Mister Perry's lifestyle was by his own accounts full of fast living, but the effects were not as glittery as the quote so often attributed to James Dean. First of all, that sentiment was first expressed in a 1949 movie that did not star James Dean. He just adopted it as his motto. Secondly, after his body was pulled from the wreckage of his Porsche, it wasn't all that pretty. 

Then there was the matter of Matthew Perry, beloved TV sitcom star and addict. He ended up living twice as long as James Dean, and his substance use and abuse took its toll on his health and well-being. When first responders came to his home, they pulled him from the hot tub where he had drowned. At the age of fifty-four. Which put him into my new classification of "too young to die." 

Except nobody, James Dean, John Belushi or Kurt Cobain would have survived the years of addiction to a variety of substances, and the near constant need to find that next great high. The autopsy results for Matthew Perry were released last week, and listed the cause of his death as "the acute effects of ketamine." Contributing factors were drowning, coronary artery disease and the effects of buprenorphine. Once you get past the minor medical jargon, you can see that this was a person who died from taking too much medicine. Medicine that made him "better." For a time. 

And then suddenly not. I am currently ahead of Matthew Perry by a touchdown. And a freedom from many of the demons that brought him down. 

Give Or Take

 If you had one hundred forty-eight million dollars, I suppose I could imagine having one hundred fifty million dollars. That's what I was thinking about when I heard that Rudy Giuliani was told to pay "nearly one hundred fifty million dollars" to the Georgia election workers who the court decided had been defamed by Rudy in his vain and vague attempts to make America gross again.

The math that decided the penalty for insisting that Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss had manipulated the vote count of the 2020 election when there was absolutely no proof of any sort of ballot shenanigans. A jury awarded Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss a combined $75 million in punitive damages. It also ordered Mr. Giuliani to pay compensatory damages of $16.2 million to Ms. Freeman and $16.9 million to Ms. Moss, as well as $20 million to each of them for emotional suffering.

About one hundred fifty million dollars. “I don’t regret a damn thing,” he said outside the courthouse, suggesting that he would appeal and that he stood by his assertions about the two women, adding that the torrent of attacks and threats the women received from Trump supporters were “abominable” and “deplorable,” but that he was not responsible for them. 

Apparently, Rudy was not responsible for his own defense either, as he chose not to testify on his own behalf. Even though he insisted earlier in the trial that he would "set the record straight." That tune changed to something less than a bang and more like this whimper: “...if I made any mistake or did anything wrong,” he thought the judge would hold him in contempt or put him in jail. “And I thought, honestly, it wouldn’t do me any good.”

The conspiracy theory former mayor, former federal prosecutor and former special counsel to the "president" has a price tag. Now it's time to pay. Nearly two hundred million dollars. 

Give or take. 

Before The Bell Rings

 One of the most frequent interactions I have with kids on the playground is The Apology Clinic. 

It begins the same, with Child A insisting that Child B has committed some unpardonable offense. These range from using "bad language" to a wide array of physical intimidation/abuse. The unspoken understanding is that Child A would like to see Child B punished in some manner befitting their vision of the offense. This scale is invariably extreme, and once they are made to understand that public flogging is off the table, Child A is asked to accept a different version of retribution: The Apology. 

Usually, the interest in getting back to whatever recess activity was interrupted by this altercation is enough to speed through steps one and two. Those who are savvy to the program will skip the glaring at one another, then looking away and blurting out the word "sorry" as if they had been coerced by something other than a simple request. At this point, Child A will be asked to take a deep breath and attempt a full sentence, without the harsh tone of voice and a rolling of the eyes. If the sincerity meter makes the slightest jump, we move on to Child B to see if they believe they have received adequate response to their grievance: Do you accept the apology? A quick yes will return things to what amounts to normal, but if further evidence comes to light, such as "she pushed me first," then we go into extra innings, with a reminder that public flogging is still off the table. 

Eventually, negotiations are completed, and more than fifty percent of the time the offended and the offender skip off into the middle distance to resume the play that generated the misunderstanding in the first place. Hopefully their next turn to the Apology Clinic is merely a checkup, and not a full scale intervention. 

I bring this up because I just read Sidney Powell's apology for her role in the Georgia Election Interference Case. "I apologize for my actions in connection with the events in Coffee County."

That's it. Thirteen words. She got a plea deal for what looks to me from my perspective to be the bare minimum that I would expect on the playground. Keeping in mind that public flogging is currently off the table, do we as a nation accept her apology? 

Keeping in mind that there is another election less than a year away. 

Returning To The Scene Of The Crime

 God help me. 

I still haven't gotten out to the cinema to take in the new Martin Scorsese film. It took a lot of cajoling form my wife to get out the door to take in the newest offering from Marvel Studios, which has always been and event of sorts for our family. My last trip to the theater was for the feel-good soccer film from Taika Waititi. A pleasant enough diversion, but none of them gave me the low-grade chills I experienced from the most recent trailer I watched.

For Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F.  

I have watched the first entry into this soon-to-be trilogy countless times. It occupies the same vast region of my brain that stores quotes from Caddyshack and Animal House. Back in 1984 this was still a fertile spot for growing and harvesting memories. Eddie Murphy took his place in my mind alongside Chevy Chase and John Belushi. Working in a video store only cemented this fixation, allowing me repeat viewings to supplement those communal stops at the local cineplex. 

When Beverly Hills Cop 2 opened, I was there on the first weekend, ready to lay down my hard-earned dollars on a ticket. Or two. I was ready for more. 

By the time the third installment showed up, I didn't flinch. I had already begun to smell the stink coming off the sequel machine, having survived the odd-numbered Star Trek films, and feeling only the slightest bit of relief from Indiana Jones coming back for that Last Crusade. I eventually caught up to Detective Foley's trip to save an amusement park on cable. It felt a lot like an episode of Scooby-Doo, featuring a very tired Eddie Murphy. 

So why would I get all worked up about yet another sequel? Perhaps it has something to do with getting the band back together, though the abysmal second Blues Brothers should have disabused me from this notion for all time. More likely it grabbed me by the lapels and screamed, "Remember how easy it used to be to be excited about a movie?" What new fish-out-of-water japes can be made at this point? Seeing this all come together under the auspices of Netflix? Maybe I felt the warm satisfaction of catching Act Four on the big screen. The one in my living room.

And this one has Kevin Bacon in it. Kevin Bacon was in Animal House. 

How could this go wrong? 

Loss Of Innocence

 My principal asked me to check the boys bathroom. This was in the midst of afternoon dismissal, so I was spawning through the crowds of departing students and the occasional lost parent to get to the portal of the presumed scene of whatever ruckus was taking place. Or was about to take place. 

My entrance into the boys bathroom was not unlike the effect of turning on the kitchen light and watching the vermin scurry under cupboards, tables and chairs. It was a full house. Full of surprised and guilty faces, all looking for the exit. My command was abrupt and succinct: Out. There were a couple protestations, "I'm just washing my hands," and "I was going to the bathroom. Really." All of which were met by a repeat of the original command. 

Out. 

As the usual suspects paraded past me, I asked one to hang back with me. Charles is a good kid whose tow older brothers had been educated in these halls. When the crowd departed, I implored him to tell me what the pending confrontation was going to be. Knowing that he would have immunity in this case, Charles unloaded the planned fisticuffs set between Derrick and Dom. It had been orchestrated earlier in the day by Alex. All of which made sense. Sad, terrible sense. 

When Derrick and Dom were in Kindergarten, they were inseparable. They moved around the playground as a unit, playing make believe games involving dinosaurs and other fantastic creatures. This bond continued until third grade. That's when Alex entered the picture. Alex wasn't much for make believe. He was more about intimidation and humiliation. Derrick wasn't interested, but Dom fell for Alex's schtick hard, and by the time they were all in fifth grade, it was Dom and Alex who could inevitably be found together at most any point during the day. Dom had taken up with the bully crew, leaving Derrick lost and confused. Dom was using his survival skills, leaving Derrick as the lone, slow gazelle. 

At the beginning of the year, exclusion was enough for Alex and his minions. Derrick tried to hang with them, but he was not allowed in. At times the sadness and frustration of having his best friend taken away spilled over in tears from Derrick. This only provided more ammunition for Alex, and by extension, Dom. 

Now, nearing the halfway point of the year, things seem to have escalated. Alex decided to stage a fight between these once upon a time friends for the amusement of as many fifth grade boys that could cram into the bathroom after school. The happy part, if there was one, was that Mister Caven appeared in the moments before hands were thrown. There was no fight in the boys bathroom. Derrick looked confused and Dom fled in the wake created by Alex. 

The only true casualty? My broken heart. 

In Or Out

 I tried very hard to recall an image of a referee or an umpire wearing glasses. 

I could not. 

Which makes sense, since that would be the first place most folks would go to when it comes time to pitch a fuss about the ruling one of these third party participants in sports events would head. The length of time between proper eye exams would probably be on the forefront of most everyone's mind who felt that their team caught the ball in bounds would be an immediate topic of discussion. 

Which is not the way that most sports fans are choosing to adjudicate the adjudicators. In the early part of the twenty-first century, we are gifted with super-slo-mo, and cameras from every conceivable angle. This includes sky-cams, pylon-cams, and every smart phone in the stadium. If a question arises, there is video evidence to support or deny the claims being made in a split second. It has become the job of referees of all stripes to make the correct choice. The National Football and Basketball leagues have instituted along with Major League Baseball instant replay review of decisions that are too difficult to make on the fly, if you'll pardon the pun as well as the one before about stripes. 

You might think that this would end the arguments. Alas, this is not the case. If anything, the chip worn by many fans on their collective shoulders only increases in weight and dimension as endless loops of video are repeated before, during and after commercial breaks. The only possible reason for many of these tortured souls is that the impartial group on the field sent to keep things from getting too contentious are somehow subject to human frailties or favoritism. The lustiest of boos are saved for those fortunate enough to be running across the grass with their only mission to assure a fair outcome. Getting a whole office full of referees in New York involved has not made any positive inroads. Broadcasters have recently taken it upon themselves to insist that the thankless job of being in control of the rule book remains that way. 

So I'm going to make a radical suggestion. Go with the elementary school solution. Rock, Paper, Scissors. Was he in bounds? Rock beats scissors. Was it a five second violation? Scissors beats paper. Was it a home run? Paper beats rock.

Or we can surrender to one of the last bastions of humanity left in professional sports and allow the strengths and frailties of the officials monitoring the game to be the fulcrum. 

Now back to the game. 

Last Century

 A very long time ago, in the late 1900s, I took over the computer lab at Horace Mann Elementary. It was a room full of Mac LCIIs connected by a series of spaghetti connections called Apple Talk. Printing was done on tractor feed machines that sounded like small arms fire when they got going. The software was a fistful of three inch floppy disks that had to be inserted in each machine to get them up and running. And the most intriguing prospect was that I inherited all of this with the large and overly complex lack of a password to unlock all of the various functions for all this Steve Jobs joy. 

The happy news came on two fronts: I learned that, as prep teacher, I was not required to have my program up and running for the first two weeks of school while we got the kiddos settled into their homeroom ruts. Additionally, I was asked to shepherd a half dozen third graders who were part of an enrollment overflow. These were my very first students, and they were kept busy with all manner of worksheets and promises of joining their own real class just as soon as one could be found or created for them. 

Eventually, I was able to create a room full of working machines: A Computer Lab. I created a mascot, Click The Mouse, to entertain the children while I scrambled about loading KidPix and Oregon Trail on the taxed memory of the barely there computers. And I thought about all this when I showed up this past Monday morning to find that all the fancy refurbished PCs had all been remotely reconfigured so my morning was full of logging in and checking two dozen plus settings for Windows and making sure they would all fire up when kids appeared shortly thereafter to begin their day in Horace Mann's Computer Lab. 

No more floppy discs. No more CD-ROMs. It's all done by network. If I had a mind to, I could sit at my desk and monitor the progress of all my little users from an app on my screen designed to keep them on the educational path and out of the ditches that Al Gore's Internet so playfully provides. No more Oregon Trail. No more KidPix. I don't have any printers left in my room. We don't print very much anymore. We send things to the cloud. Way back in the 1900s, if a kid left my room without a colorful dot matrix print of whatever their fertile imaginations could generate in sixteen bits, there were tears. 

Now the tears are mine. Longing for those days when I could simply find the right plug or blow the dust out of a disc drive to get things back in order. The good old 1900s. 

Christmas Crunch

 An observant friend sent me a text that featured a picture of a box of Captain Crunch's Christmas Crunch. I want to believe that my reaction was the universal one: Don't you wish this was available all year long? Fun holiday shapes? Colors not found in nature? And all that sugar. Why limit this kind of sugar frenzy to just a couple of months? 

Which make me think of the two holiday confections that I save for that time of year as the days grow shorter and seasonal affective disorder is on the rise. Sure, you could try installing full spectrum bulbs in all the fixtures in your house. Or you could invest heavily in Karo Syrup, chocolate chips and marshmallow creme to make your days a little brigher. 

Or at the very least we can all hope to vibrate at a slightly higher frequency. 

It's the holdays, after all. 

Which brings us the the ritual slaughter of vaguely flightless fowl for the purposes of filling us all with more than our RDA of tryptophan. That only serves to counteract all that grasshopper pie and peanut brittle. It's a sum zero equation. Hey holiday hosts: Pick a lane! 

Understand that there is a precedence for festive gorging, but remember that moods are already tender things at this time of year, so be careful while you're shopping. 

Or maybe we could just stock up on Captain Crunch. 

Oliver's Story

 What can you say about an eighty-two year old man who died?

My first connection to Ryan O'Neal was through Mad Magazine. At eight years old, I was not quite ready to go to the cinema and experience Love Story in all its 1970 glory. Instead, the first time I encountered Mister O'Neal was through his caricatured face in Lover's Story, brought to me by that "usual gang of idiots." Surprising that they didn't go with their more standard "Love Blecch." 

It would be another three years before I was ready to take a seat inside the theater to see the acting prowess of Ryan O'Neal. This was the year of Paper Moon. 1973. Ryan's eight year old daughter starred with him, which I suppose made this a "kids film" in the eyes of my parents. In my eyes it was an art film because it was in black and white. A black and white film released only three years before our nation's two hundredth birthday. It was also one of the first times I connected a director with a film: Peter Bogdanovich. 

Two years later I went with my family once again to see Barry Lyndon. This time Ryan O'Neal was in the expressly capable hands of director Stanley Kubrick. My father complained bitterly about the film after we left the theater, which probably cemented my commitment and fascination with Kubrick's work. 

And then things began to slip a bit for Mister O'Neal. He kept working in film and television, but his personal life became more interesting than his roles. This trend culminated in his relationship with Farrah Fawcett, and their on-again off-again relationship was generally considered to be off in 1997, but it was Ryan who was by Farrah's side when she passed away from cancer in 2009. 

It would be nice to say, upon his passing, that Ryan O'Neal brought me to the work of one more great director before he died. That would not be the case. For the record, it wasn't until I was in college working in a video store that I finally got around to watching Love Story. I confess that I enjoyed the Mad Magazine parody more. But this is the passing of Hollywood royalty, of sorts, and if those three films mentioned here were listed on anyone else's resume, you would say that they stomped on the Terra. And for a short time back in the 1970s, maybe that is what Ryan O'Neal did. He will be missed. Or at least the Mad Magazine version of his life will be. 

Mush King

 Not merely content with running his own businesses into the ground, Elongated Mush is currently insisting that Bob Iger, CEO of Disney, be fired. 

The "inventor" of the Cybertuck has decreed that Mister Iger should be dismissed. “He should be fired immediately,” Mush, who often uses his influential perch to bully critics and others, wrote about Iger on the platform formerly known as Twitter. “Walt Disney is turning in his grave over what Bob has done to his company.”

I don't doubt that Mister Mush is in regular communication with spirits from another world, but in this case, I believe he may have overstretched his own capacity. Elong is upset because of Disney's decision to pull advertising from what continues to be referred to as Twitter, in spite of his dorky insistence that it be referred to by one of the least loved letters in the English alphabet. My doubts are centered on Mister Mush's characterization of Walt Disney rolling over in his grave when all of us know that Walt's severed head is all that remains of Mickey's creator, and therefore the image presented by Elong must be false. When you add to this the regular and continued interference that he must experience with transmissions from his home planet, the otherworldly messages he claims to receive can only come from extraterrestrial sources. Not from deep beneath the Earth's surface. 

What is not in dispute is the deeply embedded hate for everything that does not go Elongated Mush's way. When things fail, it is not his fault. It has to be someone else's. Employees who aren't working hard enough. Executives form other companies who do not embrace his loopy notions. True free speech advocates who wonder why Mister Mush has turned Twitter (yes I said Twitter) into a playground for hate and fear. Bob Iger's decision to pull advertising came as a result of not just some of the ugliness that was allowed to be spewed from the amplified voices of anti-Semitism and conspiracy nuts of all stripes. There was also the matter of Mush's own barely veiled screeds of his own. 

But in Elongated Mush's mind, it's Bob Iger that needs to be shown the door. Once again, in a world of corporate greed and corruption, somehow Mush has found a way to make the rabid mice at Disney appear to be the good guys. Kudos to you, Mister Mush. 

Scraps

 “The surgeries done on minors involve cutting off body parts at a time when these kids cannot even legally smoke a cigarette. Kids who go from puberty blockers to cross-sex hormones are at a much greater likelihood of winding up sterile. How is it that you think a parent should be able to OK these surgeries, never mind the sterilization of a child?”

This is the way Megyn Kelly, who left Fox News because apparently wasn't far enough to the right for her, chose to open her questioning of Chris Christie at the fourth and final Republican Presidential Debate. Hard to believe.

Hard to believe that there was a fourth debate among those fighting for the scraps left from the man who suggests he is running for dictator. 

But more difficult to comprehend why these right-leaners are falling over themselves trying to build a terror campaign against trans youth. 

The American Medical Association affirms everyone's right to pursue gender-affirming care, citing "dramatically reduced rates of suicide attempts, decreased rates of depression and anxiety, decreased substance use, improved HIV medication adherence and reduced rates of harmful self-prescribed hormone use." 

Of course, the folks on the stage were primarily those who insisted that taking horse de-wormer and licking doorknobs was the way to deal with the plague of COVID-19. What do those clowns at the AMA know? 

But with all this talk about mutilation of kids, there was no discussion of the most recent mass shootings in this great land of ours. Last Tuesday, a US Army vet in Texas killed his parents, then drove to Austin where he proceeded to murder four more innocents before fleeing police, leaving another three wounded. On Wednesday, a man who was turned down for a teaching job at the University of Nevada Las Vegas killed three people on the campus and wounded another before police arrived and shot the gunman. 

So, you want to talk about mutilation? This isn't hypothetical or imagined. It happened. And Megyn Kelly wants to know how we can let trans kids seek therapy that will save their lives. 

That's not what Republicans are talking about. They're too busy fighting over the scraps.  

Those Were The Days

 It occurred to me that perhaps Norman Lear outlived his own influence. When he left this planet, he had survived one hundred one trips around the sun, and countless confrontations with network censors. Even now, I can see some of you scratching your collective head asking, "Norman Lear who?"

Norman Lear gave the traditional American sitcom a needed shot in the arm back in the 1970s. You may remember a little show called, "All In The Family." Back in 1971, Norman Lear, television writer-director-producer borrowed a situation from across the pond and turned it into one of the defining mileposts of American television. Here was a patriarch who was not just bumbling, but capable of being completely reprehensible. Here was a daughter who not only stood up to her father, but brought her left-wing hippie husband to live upstairs in the Bunker house. In the bunker. Funny. And the mother, wringing her hands endlessly and capable of bringing goofy sense to the most out of control situations. 

"All In The Family" ran for eight seasons, through Vietnam and Watergate. Past the Bicentennial and the oil crisis and Jimmy Carter. It was during those years that Mister Lear all but invented the machine we know as the spin-off. At one point, his company had seven hit shows on, filling one's broadcast TV schedule for the week. There was Maude, who subsequently begat Good Times. Archie's neighbor made it big in the dry cleaning business and moved on up in the Jeffersons. From there it was only a short hop to Checking In. The Bunker house changed its focus to Archie Bunker's Place, while Gloria set out on her own. And somewhere out there was the remnant known as 704 Hauser, picking up the story at Archie's old address. 

Not all of these shows were hits, and by the beginning of the 1980s, the histrionics jammed into each Lear half-hour gave way to simpler, jigglier comedy. As a nation, we seemed to need a rest. But it was during the late seventies and early eighties that Norman Lear brought me the show that will live forever in my heart: One Day At A Time. I could say that I was tuning in to follow the struggles of newly divorced single mom Ann Romano, but that would not be the case. This was, in my view, Valerie Bertinelli's show, and this was appointment television for me. Sure, there were a lot of current events mixed up in this soufflé, but it was worth wading through to spend a half hour with Valerie. 

And for this, but not only this, I salute Norman Lear and all his groundbreaking strides as a television pioneer and thinker. He stomped on the Terra, and brought me the crush that kept me glued to the tube. He stomped on the Terra and he will be missed. Tuesday nights at nine. 

Point Of View

Here in Oakland, the war continues. 

Not the one going on outside, with the shooting and killing, but the one in which we pick a side in the Israel-Hamas War. While a ceasefire was granted in the hopes of getting humanitarian aid inside Gaza, as well as facilitate hostage transfers, the Oakland City Council held a wide-ranging discussion about a resolution that nominally supported and encouraged the ceasefire. 

But first there was public comment. Like all open forums in this city by the Bay, there was a variety of opinions. A number of video clips circulated on social media showed individual members of the public repeating conspiracy theories disputing that the October 7 attacks were carried out by Hamas. “The notion that this was a massacre of Jews is fabricated narrative,” one public attendee said of the attacks inside Israel. Other public speakers offered unconditional backing to Hamas. “I support the right of the Palestinian people to resist occupation, including through Hamas, the armed wing of the unified Palestinian resistance,” insisted another. 

Please understand that my own position continues to be that both groups should be sent to the principal's office and receive a call home, and probably miss recess for the rest of the week. But that's my view from out on the playground where violence is a non-starter by anyone and there is always a diplomatic solution. 

That being said, we turn our gaze to the Oakland Unified School District, which has a number of teachers prepared to stage a "teach-in" during which a teacher says educators can "apply their labor power to show solidarity with the Palestinian people" by encouraging students to think critically, by introducing them to new ideas and by having positive conversations about what's happening. This, of course, draws a metaphorical line in the sand for the Administration, who included in their response to the action, "We have remained unwavering in our stance against anti-Semitic, anti-Israeli, Islamophobic, or anti-Palestinian prejudice or discrimination within our District." 

So maybe the Superintendent needs some time to sit on the bench and think about her comments along with her teachers. 

Staff Inflection

 There was a time when all of our teachers here at my school were of a certain age. At that time, I was still considered something of "an elder," since I came to work here after a spate of jobs that turned out not to be a career. At first, I was definitely a rookie, not just in age but in my capacities. As I was to become familiar, many schools in urban areas experience more than their share of turnover. Burnout is a factor that all of us face at some point. 

But way back when, in what I will refer to as "The Silver Age" of my time at Horace Mann, when that first wave of new hires with whom I came in became the veterans. And a new crew came in and took the place of the frazzled group that left with the back of their heads still smoking. This was the fresh-faced roster that was eager to face the challenges of inner-city education with dedication and enthusiasm. 

Which they did.

And they brought with them a bushel of youthful invigoration that made me feel like the old man. These folks worked hard. And, not by coincidence, they played hard. When Friday came, and the windows were closed and the doors were locked, it was quite often time to go out and celebrate another week's victories and wallow in the defeats. I recognized the "it's five o'clock somewhere" mentality from a previous incarnation of my own some years past. The most impressive thing was how Mondays would come and the rigors of recreation would be shaken off and they would return to the modern professional model to which we had all become accustomed. Bloodshot eyes notwithstanding. 

Like all waves of fresh faces, they began to drift away, replaced by a new lineup, still dedicated but now more inclined to leave the party earlier, leaving more time for recuperation. These were the folks who came to the job with other schools in their past, other principals, other colleagues. Now they are of a certain age that falls more in a line with my own experience. I have watched fellow teachers take off for paternity leave. Some come back. Some don't. There are also those whose bodies are wearing out and the strain of being on point for an elementary classroom is taking its toll. Where the old crew used to bounce back with their headaches and hangovers, this is the group that requires more bed rest and extended medical attention. That strong line has breaks in it. 

So we fill in and make do. But there are times when I miss that group of hard-drinking party animals who used to show up every day, with a pocketful of Advil and a determination to make it through another day. 

Humbug

 Ya know, when you go way out an a limb to make a point about just how severe your collective points of view are it's probably just a matter of time before the veil is lifted. And when that veil is lifted, what appears is the biggest mess of hypocrisy that one could possibly imagine.

To wit: Christian Ziegler, the Florida Chairman of The Republican Party, has been accused of rape by a woman who says she was assaulted while awaiting a three-way sexual encounter inside the woman's home. The other participant who was late to the party? Christian's wife Bridget, the co-founder of Moms For Liberty. 

So let's take just a moment or two to unravel this. Christian is the head of the Republican Party in Florida, where Republicans make every effort to show up just to the right of the Taliban when it comes to social issues. Family values are what they're selling in the Sunshine State, and business is good. Whether it's banning books or quoting Hitler, Moms For Liberty are looking to free parents from the tyranny imposed on them by public education and all other manner of naughtiness. Keeping Florida and the rest of the United States free from such bad behavior is the job of such stalwarts as Christian and Bridget. 

But when nobody's looking, it just might be more fun to be bad. While Bridget insists that she has been a leading anti-trans activist and “critical race theory” opponent who has said her aim is to bring “religious values” into public schools that she claims are “indoctrination centers for the radical left,” it could be that all that looking into the lasciviousness of the other side may have blinded her from her true mission? And to be fair, the bedroom antics of consenting adults aren't really the kind of thing that I care much about, until they start tipping the sanctimonious scales. And running afoul of the law. 

Then again, the Grand Old Party has recently been fond of supporting candidates who tout one set of values for their followers while following their very own special code of ethics. The current GOP front runner has been married three times and has committed adultery in each of them. He has been found guilty of sexual abuse, and fined millions of dollars for the defamation of his victim. Following this playbook, it's only a matter of time before Christian Ziegler starts spouting off about how awful and horrible the trois member of his menage is. 

Because it's Florida. Because it's 2023. Because it's Republicans. 

Would You Believe It?

 There was once a boy who very much wanted to be a member of Congress. The United States Congress. It's not an easy thing to do. It costs a lot of money to run for Congress. So the boy begged, borrowed, and yes even stole in order to make his dreams come true. 

He ended up serving three hundred and thirty-one days of what we can only assume was the happiest time of his life. Except for maybe those days he spent playing for the Baruch College volleyball team, especially when they "slayed" both Harvard and Yale. Much happier than the time he spent as a producer of the notorious Broadway flop, Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark. 

But nothing could compare to him losing his beloved grandmother. First to the Holocaust in Germany, and later to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. 

Yet, somehow, none of these setbacks could hold our boy back. In 2020, he didn't quite make the cut, but by insisting that the election results were skewed in such a way that he must certainly have won like his political role model. So after two years of grinding that particular axe, our boy hopped back into the race and this time the widespread voter fraud that kept him out of office didn't keep him from becoming a member of Congress, truly and for real. 

But all of those question marks that swirled around the boy just would not go away, and even though he worked as hard as any pathological liar could, the cheaters and naysayers caught up to him and made it all but impossible to enjoy the ride. They accused him of cheating. And lying. To which he replied that he was going to tattle on all the other members of Congress because all of them lied, cheated, and stole their way to their positions of power. 

Which may or may not be true, but the boy forgot one important detail. All of those other liars, cheaters and thieves didn't get caught. The boy did, and he became just the sixth person ever to be expelled from the United States House of Representatives. 

Which is something he won't have to lie about.

And the name of that boy whose dreams are now tattered and torn? 

Cary Grant. 

Diagnosis

 A student brought me a Chromebook while I was standing in the cafeteria supervising lunch. It came with a note, and the student's reiteration of the information scrawled by a substitute, stating that another student had "dropped" the device on the floor and the screen had cracked, rendering it useless. It was not the first time I was handed a machine in the cafeteria or the playground or a hallway or just about anywhere I can be found on the campus outside of the Computer Lab. I am, after all, The Computer Teacher and I should be available at all points throughout the day to receive broken or defective computers. 

This was, however, the tenth Chromebook to come from this one fifth grade classroom over the past week. To her credit, the substitute in the class was doing what I had asked her which was to make an accounting of the broken and damaged student devices so that I could try and fix or replace them as necessary. 

I did not expect to have ten brought to me over the course of a week.

I was able to resuscitate a few of them, correcting a setting, plugging them in to fully charge, or fiddling with them just long enough to get them back in service. Only to be replaced by another fifth grader standing with yet another Chromebook, note attached. 

I have lived through this scenario a few times over the course of my tenure as Site Technologist, but this last one struck a nerve. It came with a student's name connected to it. Jesse had been struggling while his teacher had been out since before Thanksgiving. Jesse had been struggling before that, all the way back to Kindergarten, and was a kid our staff sighed when we heard his name connected to a disruption or behavior unbecoming of a Horace Mann Jaguar. 

Which is why when I saw that it was Jesse that had "dropped" his Chromebook, smashing the screen, I felt the need to follow up. There is no quick fix for a cracked LCD display. 

I waited for Jesse to finish his lunch, and asked him to come and talk with me, away from his peers. I asked him how the Chromebook came to fall on the floor. What he described was an accident. A moment of carelessness that might have happened to any student in any classroom. It just so happened that this was Jesse, and it was the tenth computer to come out of his classroom over the course of a rather tumultuous week. 

And this is where I stopped myself. I wondered if I was disappointed to find out this was "just an accident." Kids and computers are a pretty dicey proposition on any given day, but if it had been any other student other than Jesse, would I have been more inclined to accept that the screen was broken out of carelessness, or would I have been moved to investigate further. 

Was I looking for some way to make Jesse culpable for this one particular device or maybe even the dozen or so machines that had found their way to my capable hands over the course of the week? 

I realized that I needed to push justice to the background, and work on getting replacements for the class that had hit a "rough patch." It happens. It's not the fault of one kid, or one behavior. We can all learn to be more careful with our technology. 

I carried the corpse back to my room and added it to the stack. We would figure out how to replace it. And instill a little more care in all fifth graders handling Chromebooks. 

Final Days

 When I was a young man, I watched Dan Aykroyd caper about in a very lengthy skit about the final days of the Richard Nixon presidency. At one point Dan, as Nixon, grabs his Secretary of State by the shoulder and pressures him into kneeling in prayer. I was already familiar with this episode from my devotion to the reporting of the Washington Post. But to see it played out here, just a few years after the fact on Saturday Night Live, was somehow vindicating. The man playing the Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, was none other than John Belushi. The other half of the Blues Brothers. 

John Belushi died in 1982. Forty-one years ago. It was a national tragedy. For someone so young to be taken so soon. Of course, there was the matter of all the bad decisions that he made leading up to his death by overdose, but he was only thirty-three years old. 

On the topic of bad decisions, we could add the willingness to kneel with the nutjob in the White House back in 1974. Or rather than taking Woodward and Berstein's collective word for it, let's look at the historical record. No report of Henry Kissinger's accomplishments would be complete without an account of the four year bombing campaign he orchestrated against Cambodia. Also on his resume is his directed illegal arms sales to Pakistan as it carried out a brutal crackdown on its Bengali population in 1971. He supported the 1973 military coup that overthrew a democratically elected socialist government in Chile, gave the go-ahead to Indonesia’s 1975 invasion of East Timor, and backed Argentina’s repressive military dictatorship as it launched its “dirty war” against dissenters and leftists in 1976. His policies during the Ford administration also fueled civil wars in Africa, most notably in Angola.

One might imagine the ghost of John Belushi, this time dressed up as former Vice President Dick "Dick" Cheney, pointing a finger in the direction of Henry Kissinger's open grave, shaking his head. Except "Dick" is still alive. But Henry Kissinger is dead. 

He lived to be one hundred years old. Never arrested. Never indicted. Never forced to answer for his crimes. Henry Kissinger never stomped on the Terra. He stomped on humanity. He will not be missed. Not by me, anyway. 

Maybe he lived so long because of that moment of prayer. Aloha, Henry. Good riddance. 

Make Believe

 The flags in Lidsville are hanging at half-mast. Half of the creative genius that brought young Mark to a land ruled by sentient headwear, Marty Krofft, has passed. 

If you grew up in the sixties and seventies, you were legally required to spend a certain amount of time each week in front of a television set playing some if not all of the programming brought to the cathode ray tube by Marty and his brother Sid. The first trip down the Nuevo-psychedelic tunnel the brothers Krofft offered up was H.R. Pufnstuf, the tale of a young man who wakes up in a land controlled by a lizard mayor, and he's the good guy. 

After that, the die was cast. Young people were being forced into existence with oversized puppets of floppy foam on a seemingly endless basis. The Bugaloos, Sigmund and the Sea Monsters, The Lost Saucer and Far Out Space Nuts continued the trend. It was Marty Krofft who summoned the former A-list talent like Jim Nabors, Bob Denver, and Jody Whitaker to the family studios to perform for an audience of children who had never experienced Gomer Pyle, Gilligan's Island, and A Family Affair. 

And then there was The Banana Splits. The Splits' theme song may be one of the most fiendishly devised earworms of all time. The rest of the show didn't matter. These anthropomorphic animals in their baggy costumes were our ersatz Beatles. Each week Fleegle, Bingo, Drooper and Snorky provided us with a new song and comedy skits that provided a wraparound for additional Krofft Kontent that was sandwiched within. No child alive at this time missed an episode, but oddly enough, no one can recall what any one of them was about. They can sing the theme song, however. Endlessly. 

Then there was the matter of the Bradys. After a very successful run on their half-hour sit com, it was someone's ingenious notion to take the disparate talents of the Brady Family, who were not actually related, and spit them back out in a variety show format, surrounded by the World of Sid and Marty Krofft. This combination of influences should be an historical marker in time, warning all those who view it about the evils of cocaine. 

But now, Marty Krofft has passed. His contributions to pop culture are forever locked away in the hearts and minds of all of us who grew up, mesmerized by the magic he and his brother brought to our Saturday mornings. While it might be unfair to say that Marty stomped on the Terra, it would be correct to say that he truly wreaked havoc with all our sensibilities while he wandered the lands in the brothers' imagination. He will be missed. And eventually forgiven. 

Building The Perfect Beast

 My wife woke up the other morning wanting to share with me an episode of a TV show she had watched with her brother. It was an episode of Netflix's scary series Black Mirror titled "Metalhead." It concerns the plight of Bella, Anthony, and Clarke as they flee robot dogs whose job to protect society has gone a little overboard. These three humans are considered threats and must be eliminated by the cyber-canines. 

A frightening enough premise, given our traditional "man's best friend" ethos. The watch dogs will protect us. Which got me to thinking about the new robot deadbolt I put on our front door. And all the robotic elements of our current web of technology. The web that controls our light, our heat and our security. And our television.

But I have worried plenty in this space about a future where robot overlords consume and destroy us all. I have been worried about Artificial Intelligence taking over where our our own imaginations fail. I have winked at Skynet becoming self-aware.

And now what I am going to say is, "Maybe all that isn't such a bad deal."

I have taken a look around at our current human-sponsored and maintained civilization and I wonder why we think that robots could do any worse. 

Instead of arguing about the existence of the threat of global warming, machines would shut down the parts of the system that are making poison. Instead of sending troops into danger, let the drones do it. Civilian casualties would be impossible if machines continue to work under the framework of Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics. I understand that getting into the weeds of such rules make for good fiction, but wouldn't it be interesting to apply those same laws to the human beings in charge. 

Ultimately, we are victims of our own construct. Whether it is the machines we build to serve us or the systems we create to keep us all safe, pretty soon those dogs are going to look at us like we were the problem. 

The scary part is that it's inevitable. 

It's Rocket Science

 The University of California played against the University of California at Los Angeles last Saturday. The Golden Bears beat the Bruins in the Rose Bowl. The final score was thirty-three to seven in what was considered by many to be an upset. The victory also allowed Cal Berkeley to become eligible for a bowl game with its sixth win. 

All of this is anecdotal to the news that this was the last regular season football game played in what has been known as the Pac 12 Conference. We can start retrofitting any or all of this information for trivia questions moving forward. 

If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? If a group of twelve collegiate football teams is suddenly left without a conference in which to gather and create schedules and sell swag with their logos, do they continue to play?

Well, if you're a sports fan of any stripe, you know that there are already college football teams without conference affiliation. The most notable of these is Notre Dame, who is able to fill its schedule with all manner of opponents anxious to take a shot at a school that gave us Touchdown Jesus and Rudy. UMass and UConn are the other two, but it's likely that they will eventually follow Army's lead and find a conference that will give them revenue sharing and a bigger slice of the pie that affiliation allows. 

Which is why those twelve teams that used to hang together as the Pacific Twelve went scurrying to find homes in conferences that would share money and chances to get into bowl games and the like. Cal Berkeley and their arch nemesis Stanford will be playing next year in the Atlantic Coast Conference. With all the Nobel Prizes in Cal's history, there is no one who can explain this geography to me. 

Because it doesn't make sense. Like when the University of Colorado went shopping for a new conference back in 2011. They landed themselves what they thought was a sweetheart of a deal in the newly enlarged Pac-12, former the Pac-10. Which makes some sense, until you try to reckon on the Big Ten Conference with its eighteen teams in its newly minted configuration. Geography means nothing. Numbers mean nothing. 

Happily, we all have a few months to try and straighten this out. I promise to care more when competition extends beyond teams formed on this planet. 

Killer Idea

 Tis the season, the season of givng. and if you've got an extra twenty or thirty bucks looking for a home, I have some suggestions.

You could give to the Red Cross. Your donation will help those who really need it. Disasters happen all the time, and it's best to be ready. 

Maybe you're a civic-minded person who would like to give directly to your local homeless shelter.

You could go down to your favorite toy store and pick up a new toy to give to your local Toys For Tots chapter. 

How about buying a bunch of lottery tickets and hand them out to strangers? Put a smile on someone's face and maybe a jackpot to go along with it.

What I am suggesting to you is that there are so many different ways that you can spent twenty-some dollars that can make a difference this holiday season. Just promise me that you won't spend that money on Kyle Rittenhouse. You might remember Kyle from his murderous night in Kenosha, Wisconson three years ago. Kyle was a teenager when he got it into his head to drive across state lines to administer his own brand of justice during a protest after an unarmed black man was killed by police. Kyle shot and killed two of the protesters and wounded another. He was later acquitted of two counts of homocide and another of attempted homocide. Kyle became the darling of the guns and ammo crowd, appearing at Republican galas and events at Mar A Lago.

That was three years ago. Now Kyle is twenty years old and he's out of money. So he wrote a book. It's called "Acquitted." He's worried that the pending civil lawsuits against him by the familes of the men he killed might spoil his plan for world domination. 

So instead of buying that book, you and a friend could take that money and do some real damage to the dollar menu at Taco Bell. Or maybe you could buy a grande Pumpkin Spice Mocha Latte to share. 

But before you throw thirty dollars out in the street, you could just Venmo me and I'll make sure that Kyle gets it. 

You can count on me. 

Steps

 This year, my son made Thanksgiving dinner. Not that there wasn't a bit of a tug-of-war about who would be doing the main dish. I have spent the better part of a quarter century becoming proficient at wrestling a mostly flightless fowl into the oven and getting it ready to serve to guests before it becomes a hypoglycemic incident. 

But not this year. My son called and said that he wanted to treat us all to his smoked tri-tip. Both my wife and son worried that this might be a difficult discussion for us all. For a few minutes, all those turkeys that I had slavishly basted and peeked at over the years obscured my vision of what could be: Free access to more football. Suddenly, the couch opened up for me. Sure son, you go ahead and get up at six in the morning to smoke the meat you've been marinating since the day before. We'll just wait here. 

And it started to catch up to me that this is how things work. Sure, I made some delicious potato salad and a grasshopper pie, but the actual marathon event that is making the main course of a holiday meal just slipped a generation. It's not like the kid's cooking prowess is in question. We have been witness to many of his creations, and he has even passed along a few recipes to his parents. 

But this was the big time. Thanksgiving dinner. How would he fare? 

I needn't have worried. The meat was tasty, and he even did us the offhand favor of saying that he had an extra slab of meat he left for his roommates that was even better. 

Even better? I'm not sure he fully comprehends the magnitude of this moment. Like the time he offered to take care of the hotel on our most recent family visit to Disneyland. "I've got this, Dad," are some pretty magical words. At once I am as proud as one might expect, and the next moment I am looking over my shoulder for the men in white coats, coming to lead me away. 

I still make a pretty good potato salad.