Disintegration

 It does occur to me now that I have some decisions to make.

I have spent my adult life with those closest to me kidding about how "you'll never stop working, will you?" I chuckle, knowingly, and push the comment to the side. They understand something about me which I have not fully reckoned. 

One need look no further than this blog for evidence of just how correct this assertion is. What started as a lark nineteen years ago has become essentially an avocation. Eleven years ago I was interviewed for a documentary short about "megabloggers." At that time I said that the reason I kept on writing and writing was that no one had bothered to tell me to stop. 

Apparently, this is still the case. Which translates roughly into the realm of my chosen career. As yet, no one has come up to me and asked me to stop teaching. Part of my plan has always to be "value added." Sure, I can teach kids how to use computers and keep them from jumping off the top of the play structure, but I will also pick up the occasional rodent corpse and climb up on the roof to try and figure out where that last soccer ball went. As an elementary school teacher I have found that there is not much that is beneath me. This is how I believe that I have become invaluable. 

But to be honest, the last time I was up there, looking down on the playground, faces of children staring up at me, I heard their words more distinctly: "Mister Caven, what are you doing up there?"

Sixty-two years old, creaky knees and a growing sense of my own mortality at the top of a ladder that for some reason I seem to be the only person who knows how to use it. Plummeting from this precipitous height would probably not kill me, but the damage to my vintage frame would be significant. Perhaps enough to keep me from climbing back up on the roof.  

Because eventually I really should stop doing that. Like clambering up in the trees in our yard to mount our holiday lights, there will come a day when my part of this grand experiment will be that of consultant rather than the astronaut. As I find each time that I bend over to pick something off the floor, I discover that the ground has moved further away. I indicate this by making one of those not-so-discrete groans that have become more a part of my catalogue of sounds. 

Which doesn't mean I will actually stop doing any of these gymnastics. It just means that I can start to ponder how to cope with the appearance of those folks with the clipboards, wearing their sad faces and politely showing me the way to the door. 

Over? Did You Say Over?

 Election day. 

Finally. 

All that doom-scrolling and all that shock and all that dismay comes to a head.

At last. 

Except none of us really expects there to be a moment at which today's proceedings will result in a peaceful transfer of power. Four years ago, a new and despicable trend began to gain traction in this great land of ours: election deniers. It was an easy enough shift for many to make after the doubt that was sown by deniers of science in the wake of COVID-19. Those who were convinced that the pandemic was a hoax were easily nudged into the belief that a presidential election could be stolen. 

I was speaking to a friend over the weekend about about how quickly this flat surface became a slippery slope. I compared it to Richard Reid, the shoe bomber. Because this would-be terrorist decided to try and blow up a plane with the soles of his kicks, we have all been forced for nearly a quarter century to take our shoes off when we want to board an airplane. Because a former game show host and enfant terrible could not conceive that the second election he participate in would result in a loss, we have all been taken for a ride on the exception express, the one that says we can't trust the results of our democratic process. Because that former game show host can't do math.

Or understand science.

Or think of anyone but himself. 

So we sit. And we wait. For the storm to pass. 

And wait.

And wait. 

For a new day. 

Choice

 If you are reading this now and have yet to make your choice for who will be our next President of the United States, first of all, you must be new. Secondly, if you have been with me all along and perhaps been sitting on the fence thinking, "I don't know, there's so much good on both sides," then maybe you haven't been actually reading this blog so much as looking at the pictures. 

Ha, ha. Just a little Entropical Paradise humor there. This is the place where my thousand words tend to take up the space where a picture might be. For a sadly great majority of the past eight years, those words have been that of a warning: Warning against letting our country fall prey to the xenophobia and misogyny promoted by the big Orange Cabal. 

Which is not to say that I want you to simply vote against a convicted felon and his "concepts of a plan" to Make America A Dystopian Wasteland. I want you to vote for Kamala Harris, a woman who has spent her life working for the people. District Attorney. Attorney General. Senator. Vice President. There is an arc to her story that is precisely the kind that we hope to celebrate with our children when we tell them, "If you work hard and stay true to your vision, someday you could be President of the United States."

And let's be honest about just what that means: Taking over the reins of our troubled nation at this point will be a lot like being in charge of The Reconstruction after our Civil War. The divides that exist within our people and its institutions could not be more stark. But Kamala Harris continues to insist that those things that threaten to tear us apart are insignificant compared to those that bring us together. 

This is what I believe. This is what I believe Kamala Harris can do for our less-than-united states. The American Dream belongs to all of us, and yes it needs to be made available to those who seek to become a part of it. The contributions of black, brown, Muslim, female, LGBTQ+, left, right, white, red and blue are all significant and need to be brought together not in a literal snapshot of what our founding fathers imagined two hundred forty-eight years ago, but a living, moving panorama of possibility. 

We won't go back. 

Nor should we. 

As the poets from Akron once urged us, "It's time to go forward, move ahead, and give the past a slip."

Vote as if your life depended it on it. And your children's life. 

And your cat's. 

Whose Idea Was This?

 "I've got it!"

"What is it this time?"

"The perfect photo op."

"That's what you said about getting him into an apron inside a closed McDonald's and having him pretend to make french fries."

"No really. This one's going to be a huge hit."

"It had better be. That debacle at Madison Square Garden is all anyone wants to talk about right now."

"It's not about dogs and cats."

"Or geese, right?"

"Yeah, well I'm not the one who suggested that we get 'that guy from the Tom Brady roast' to come and make racist jokes about everyone we're trying to convince that we aren't racist."

"True. And maybe holding a 'white guys' rally at the site of the biggest Nazi rally in American history may have been a little short sighted."

"At least we kept the swastikas to a minimum."

"I'm pretty sure Elon was just a yelp or two away from shouting 'Sieg Heil'..."

"That's why this one is such a slam-dunk. It won't take any additional special guests. Just our guy."

"Okay, lay it on me."

"Picture this: Our guy is standing out on the tarmac -"

"In front of a big jet -"

"No, no, no. We want to appeal to the common man."

"So what do you have in mind?"

"We get him to stand out there and give a few minutes of 'weave,' then the truck shows up."

"Truck? The boss loves trucks!"

"Don't you know it. But here's the spin: It's a trash truck."

"Trash truck?"

"Yeah. With the logo painted big across the side."

"Where the trash goes?"

"Exactly."

"I don't know how this could miss." 

Tears For Teri

 I believe that Michael Dorsey should have ended up with Sandy Lester. 

If you are unfamiliar with those names, you might recognize the actors who portrayed these characters from Tootsie: Dustin Hoffman and Teri Garr. If you are familiar with the film, you know that the movie, as played on screens for more than forty years has Michael/Dustin finally getting a chance with the object of his desire played by Jessica Lange. He does this with one of the most ham-handed flurry of "romantic" dialogue committed to celluloid: "You don't have to. She's right here. And she misses you. Look, you don't know me from Adam. But I was a better man with you, as a woman... than I ever was with a woman, as a man. You know what I mean? I just gotta learn to do it without the dress. At this point, there might be an advantage to my wearing pants. The hard part's over, you know? We were already... good friends."

(retching sounds) 

And not just because it seemed like a completely fantastical leap even for a romantic comedy, but because of the way Michael/Dustin just casts his other friend Sandy/Teri aside in order to be with this ridiculous only in Hollywood longshot. 

Full disclosure: I love Teri Garr, and while I am impressed with the classic beauty and acting chops of Ms. Lange, I know that I would have made a different choice than Mr. Hoffman. I would have picked Sandy in a heartbeat, not just because of my not-so-latent affection for Ms. Garr but because of the sacrifices Sandy made for her pal and not-so-secret crush Michael Dorsey. 

I was familiar with Teri Garr from her numerous TV appearances, including appearing in an episode of the original series of Star Trek that might have become a spin-off. And she was Phoebe's mom on Friends. But mostly she was and will always be in my heart for her sweet and naïve turn as Froodrick Fronkensteen's lovely assistant, Inga. I was twelve, and I was smitten. 

She added just the right flustered feminist counterpoint to Michael Keaton's Mr. Mom. She was the reason I bothered to take a peek at Mom And Dad Save The World. Teri Garr's appearances on the David Letterman Show were appointment television. 

Teri went to her reward this past Tuesday. She stomped on the Terra, but I guess not hard enough to get through that thick skull of Dustin Hoffman's. She will be missed. Aloha, Ms. Garr. 

Show Stopper

 The quiet part isn't quiet anymore. 

The Republican Party, in their continued and impassioned mistake of going all-in on backing a convicted felon, has become in words of (checks notes) Hillary Clinton "deplorable." To be more specific, the former New York Senator, First Lady and Secretary of State once referred to "half" of Trump supporters as fitting a "basket of deplorables," while the other half are people who feel the government has let them down and need understanding and empathy.

Eight years later, I am not sure if that ratio still holds, and I don't know how much understanding and empathy I have left for the crew that put together the rally in Madison Square Garden last weekend. A parade of speakers showed up on the stage that was already being referred to as a "Nazi Rally" to confirm these assertions. One of the lowlights of the show was "comedian" Tony Hinchcliffe who let this one fly: “There’s a lot going on. I don’t know if you know this but there’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it’s called Puerto Rico."

In a city that more than half a million Puerto Ricans call "home," this little jibe was met with immediate blowback not just from those who live there, but across the country. And it wasn't just Puerto Ricans who were outraged. Human beings from across the rainbow of our great nation voiced their displeasure. Which didn't keep Tony from falling back on the lamest response possible: "Can't you guys take a joke?" 

Well, Tony, here's the deal: If it were a joke in the first place, then we might stand a chance of "taking it." And if on your way out you hadn't managed to tick off a list of other minorities to degrade, then maybe there would be some claim to "humor."  Another speaker said that Kamala Harris was managed by “pimp handlers” and said of Democrats that “we need to slaughter these other people.” Very former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani said, as did several others, that Democrats were behind attempts to kill Donald Trump. Another speaker called Harris “the devil” and “the antichrist.”

Stop it guys. You're just too darn funny. 

Get it? That was a joke. I was being ironic. I was suggesting that something was happening in the opposite way to what is expected, and typically causing wry amusement because of this. 

Counting the days.