Up Above It All

The year was 1977. There were still plenty of polyester shirts going to discos. The Sex Pistols were taking their country by storm, with an eye toward conquering the U.S. Elvis Presley died. And George Willig was climbing the World Trade Center. Many of you may remember those polyester shirts, and some of you may still have your 45s of Silver Convention performing Fly Robin Fly tucked away in a box, awaiting the Disco Renaissance. And while you may have missed the reunion tour the Pistols pulled together, you can still catch their doppelgangers in a pub near you. Elvis? He's still everywhere, but mostly dead.
And what about George "The Human Fly" Willig? Once he got finished paying off the one hundred ten dollar fine, one cent for each floor he climbed, He signed his name on a metal plate on the observation deck, where it remained until the towers came tumbling down in 2001. He went on the Merv Griffin Show. He got jobs as a stuntman. He wrote a book. He easily consumed his fifteen minutes of fame and maybe just a touch of someone else's. He waited until after the Mother Ship landed at Devil's Tower, Wyoming before he tried climbing that. Later, he went to work remodeling homes in the San Fernando Valley.
You thought he was gone.
But he wasn't.
Just like Johnny Rotten, it's better to burn out than to fade away, but a young Virginia man decided to take up the Human Fly's mantle and began scaling the Trump Tower this past week. Stephen Rogata had arrived in New York City with the intent of meeting everyone's favorite Starburst Flavored Republican. How better to make an impression than to use giant suction cups to dangle precariously over the Big Apple's streets? Mister Rogata never made it to the top. He has yet to make good on his attempt to meet the man for whom the tower was named, but given the way Mister Truhhhmpah makes his choices for cabinet posts, why wouldn't a good conservative boy like Stephen get a shot? And yes, ladies and gentlemen, it's 1977 all over again. Has anyone seen my bell bottoms?

Murphy's Park

One of the things I missed out on this summer was a trip to an amusement park. No visits to the House of Mouse, or the Six Flags Great America Rollercoasterorama. The thrills I have experienced have been almost exclusively of the vicarious variety. Which is fine, especially when you consider what is at stake in a lot of these enterprises.
It was the late Michael Crichton who first hipped me to the frightening underbelly of amusement park. I went to Westworld back in the summer of 1973, and even though the resort depicted was for grown-ups, it didn't take much additional imagination to picture man-sized rodents running amok and flying elephants reigning peanutty death from the skies. It wouldn't take much to tip the scales in the direction of the toons. That's why the parade of Jurassic Park movies haven't done much to terrorize me, rather they are simply affirming the chaos theory spouted by anyone who made the mistake of putting themselves on a remote island teeming with man-eating reptiles. It's a recipe for disaster.
Which is pretty much what happened earlier this summer when a two year old boy was dragged to a watery grave by an alligator at the Walt Disney World Resort. It makes sense that a family from Nebraska would be ill-equipped to deal with the reality of ten foot long dinosaur relatives lurking just off the shore of their vacation cottage. What is surprising is the way Disney, which tends to avoid such acts of random savagery, allowed this event to occur. If you were to fall into the lagoon in Disneyland's Jungle Cruise, the biggest danger you might face would be the unholy repetition of the same banter that has been performed on those waters for the past three generations. Life and death are rarely found in close proximity in the Magic Kingdom, unless it's one of those Make A Wish kids, and it's not likely that being consumed by an alligator is on any of their bucket lists.
Still, it's the nature of amusement parks, even those run by Mickey and Minnie, to offer up a little danger. Michael Crichton's impulse for writing Westwold and Jurassic Park stemmed from that same impulse that we have all had to hold up our arms on the roller coaster. Even though the tired, pre-recorded voices tell us to keep our hands and feet inside the car at all times, we don't. It's the added thrill of not dong as we are told that makes the experience just a little more thrilling.
That thrill may have been on the mind of the ten year old boy who died as a result of a seventeen story plunge down a water slide in Kansas last week. Nothing spoils a trip to the local water park like a near-decapitation. Water slides are fun. Water slides are exciting. Do we really need one that is seventeen stories high? Wait in line for two hours for an eighteen second ride that might end in death?
Suddenly I don't feel so bad about sitting through Suicide Squad.

Trump Rules

As part of his ongoing attempt to make the United States great again, Donald "Jay" Terrump is hoping to get a chance to debate his Democratic rival, Hillary "Ar" Clinton. But our boy Donnie won't go into this thing without a sense of what he's getting into. "I want to debate very badly," said the Cinnamon Twist, unaware of just how badly he will probably debate. “I renegotiated the debates in the primaries, remember? They were making a fortune on them and they had us in for three and a half hours and I said that’s ridiculous,” Trumbop said. “I’m sure they’ll be open to any suggestions I have, because I think they’ll be very fair suggestions." Aside from the time, place and choice of moderators, here is a look at some of the suggestions Mister Twump would like to make:
Responses of more than one hundred forty characters will be redacted.
Masks must be worn.
You aren't allowed to question the mask. 
Respect the "no song" zone.
A score of Q to twelve will be considered a win.

Any penalty legislation may be in the form of pain, embarrassment, or any other abasement the rulee deems fit to impose on his opponent. 

The second card is turned upward, except on Tuesdays.

Be aware of your surroundings. 

An INFIELD FLY is a fair fly ball (not including a line drive nor an attempted bunt) which can be caught by an infielder with ordinary effort, when first and second, or first, second and third bases are occupied, before two are out. The pitcher, catcher and any outfielder who stations himself in the infield on the play shall be considered infielders for the purpose of this rule. When it seems apparent that a batted ball will be an Infield Fly, the umpire shall immediately declare ''Infield Fly'' for the benefit of the runners. If the ball is near the baselines, the umpire shall declare ''Infield Fly, if Fair.'' The ball is alive and runners may advance at the risk of the ball being caught, or retouch and advance after the ball is touched, the same as on any fly ball. If the hit becomes a foul ball, it is treated the same as any foul. If a declared Infield Fly is allowed to fall untouched to the ground, and bounces foul before passing first or third base, it is a foul ball. If a declared Infield Fly falls untouched to the ground outside the baseline, and bounces fair before passing first or third base, it is an Infield Fly.

Rules? In a knife fight?

Nobody talks about fight club.

Other than that, he's pretty much on board with the whole thing. 

Should be fun. 

Word From On High

My first question would be: How does one go about being in charge of anarchy? I understand that ISIS isn't exactly a group of anarchists, but they don't seem too affixed to a standard organizational tree. If anything, they seem to be out of their tree more often than not. Still, somebody's got to pay the bills, order the plastic explosive and keep track of all those frequent flyer miles that the group must rack up on their zig-zagging path across the globe in search of more and more recruits to subvert the dominant paradigm. Just not the guys in charge of ISIS. You've got to draw the line somewhere.
Like you've got to have somebody who will take care of that whole taking responsibility business. These days, whenever anything particularly heinous occurs, it's only a matter of time before somebody from the front office calls and claims that this or that horrible idea was ISIS's, which is an awful mouthful of a possessive.
This past week, a wacko swinging a machete attacked two Belgian policewomen. The thirty-three year old Algerian who was living in Belgium illegally was praised by the Islamic State group for following the somewhat open-ended instructions to attack citizens of countries that are part of a U.S. led coalition seeking to eradicate that Islamic State group. A third Belgian police officer shot and killed the attacker, who was said to have a criminal record, but no known terrorist connections.
Well, he does now, and that really is the nice thing about ISIS: their willingness to take on any nitwit with a gun or a bomb or a machete who happens to shoot, explode or hack his or her way into their good graces. It doesn't seem exactly fair that terrorists get to join the team more or less after the fact, since declaring jihad seems like a pretty public thing and shouldn't be grandfathered in or put in the record book with an asterisk.
Global Warming? It was ISIS's plan to poke a hole in the ozone layer way back in the 1970's.
Athlete's foot? Pretty much the same deal. Not quite as devastating as a suicide bomb, but way more annoying.
I suspect we can all anticipate the announcement from ISIS headquarters that they have been in charge of the Post Office and the Department of Motor Vehicles for years now. Gales of wicked and derisive laughter. Isn't it enough that I still have to take off my shoes to get on a plane? Thanks a lot, terrorists.

Good Morning, Star Shine

I don't generally put a lot of stock in the world of the astrological and zodiac signs, since I have one of those birthdays that sits on the cusp between two signs. Depending on which newspaper I read or which link I click on, my fortunes of the day may be radically different. This is also apparent, when I am asked by those inquiring to my sign and I give them one or the other, there will a loud "I knew it," and then the categorization of all my character traits can begin. It makes perfect sense to those who make these pronouncements that I would do or be such a person, since I am a Gemini. Presented with the possibility that everything they have just diagrammed is incorrect since I am really a Cancer only serves to rev up the rationalization for these scientific observations. Leading the true believers to assert that only a Gemini/Cancer cusp would make such trouble in the first place.
However, I can't wholly discount this birthday star sign nonsense, since I have the unique experience of having had my two longest roommate relationships with people who were born on the same day. It could be coincidence that my wife and my roommate from college just happened  to have been born on this day mere hours apart. Or it could be that I made some subliminal choice based on repressed knowledge gained from a glance at a driver's license way back when, but I can only imagine how well I would have gotten along with thirty-first president of the United States Herbert Hoover, or Tin Woodman Jack Haley had either one of those Leos been around to share a one bedroom apartment with me back in the day.
Or maybe it has something to do with growing up in Boulder during the seventies. Nature. Nurture. Hard to say which came first in the big chicken/egg picture, but since neither of those are sun signs, I can't give an accurate reading. What I can say is that both of these individuals held a key position in my live at times when my own tendencies were to stick to myself. These were friends who brought me out of my crabby shell or forced me to reckon with my own dual nature. Or something like that. They continue to be forces in my life that helped put me on the path on which I find myself decades later. I celebrate their birthday today with them and thank them individually for their contributions to my life. For your troubles and consideration, I wish you the best of days and encourage you to enjoy the galactic significance of having landed in my life. Just like a Leo, right?

The Games People Play

I know I should care more. It's an event, after all. It's an event that only happens every four years. Maybe it's because of all the katzenjammer antics going on in the other leap year associated event, the U.S. presidential election, but the Summer Olympic games  I have been able to keep up with all the fuss and drama leading up to the less-than-adequate housing for the athletes who have trained all their lives for this one moment in the sun. And the filth. Sadly, this portion of the coverage dovetails well with the rest of the summer's world news. Broken pipes and bad electrical somehow makes sense in a world full of things that are falling apart. Why not just build things that way, even if those things happen to be your Olympic Village?
Now the competition has begun. There will be cycling and swimming and running and jumping and gymnastics and basketball and tennis and karate and swimming and more running and jumping. The National Broadcasting Company will be using its pervasive network of channels to bring a seemingly unending blizzard of televised events, including fencing and equestrian events. My wife, at some point, will wonder aloud how she managed to miss all that coverage of her favorite parts of the Olympiad.
My favorite part? The marathon. Once upon a long time ago, there was this guy named Frank Shorter, and forty-four years ago he won that race. He won a gold medal. He was a resident of Boulder, Colorado at that time. We, who lived in his adopted hometown, watched in 1972 as Frank ran to glory. And he brought the sport of running to Boulder. It was not long after that moment of Olympic success that it seemed like everyone from the foothills to the flatlands was running. I was one of them.
I ran around Boulder while another summer games came and went. And another. Then I moved out to California, where I kept running while another series of Olympic events were staged in nations and on TV screens that never quite caught my attention like those '72 Munich games. This probably had a lot to do with the way international terrorism reared its ugly head in the midst of all that sports. Since then,  everyone has hoped that there would not be a repeat of such a scene. And there was, of sorts, in 1996 when a bomb went off in Atlanta's Olympic Village. Where my older brother was part of a multi-national security force. And for a while, I stopped running. Long enough to make sure that he was okay.
That was twenty years ago, and there has been a lot of running and jumping since then. A lot of gold medals have been handed out. I have missed a lot of televised running, jumping and medals. But I kept on running. I know I should care more, but some of the joy of competition has been drained from the experience over the past forty-four years.
And I keep running.

Artificial Intelligence

I don't mind artificial intelligence as long as it appears to be what it is: artificial. When it gets creepy, like that Hayley Joel Osment. You look like a kid, and a lot of what comes out of you sounds like a kid, but then there is a moment when there is new input. That input does not correspond to the pre-programmed responses and you get something like a robot chugging a glass of water with disastrous results. Circuits fried. System reset. Time to buy a new robot. Unless the robot in question doesn't look like a person, or a dog, or anything that resembles anything but a robot. It's a safety issue, really.
But we don't really want robots that act like robots. We don't want to talk to machines as if they were machines, and we are put instantly at ease by a machine that says please or thank you. The simplest form of this can be found on those holding pens you get flushed into when you call a number that more than three other people want to reach at the same time as you. Hold music isn't enough anymore. We need the calm reassurance of a pre-recorded voice letting us know that our call is important and it will be answered in the order in which it came in. Robots are fair, after all.
Especially when they are programmed that way.
It really would be much easier if the evil robot overlords would show up in a blaze of angry laser beams intended to burn all us users to a crispy carbon form for easy composting. We have been preparing for this for some time now. Instead of termination, I believe we will all succumb to annoyance and frustration long before lasers are fired in anger. Little by little, our humanity is being tested by robo-calls that have been engineered to act just like Hayley Joel Osment: Human-ish. The one I received recently had a pleasant southern drawl and a vested interest in the aftercare of those in my household who may have recently recovered from complications due to, well, I don't know exactly what because I was pretty clear that I had answered to phone only because I was desperate to do so in a household that didn't have anyone recovering from anything except a lack of phone calls for me. The fact that none of the delivery or information was impacted by my interruption, only a moment of re-calibration before the if-then protocol dropped the needle on the phrase, "I'm sorry, I didn't quite catch that."
"You're a droid," I asserted.
"I don't usually get that question," obsequioused the voice.
It wasn't a question. It was an assertion. I was purposely missing my cues to give up my personal information so that whatever service, supplies or hardware this company wanted to ship to me at my convenience. This resulted in the termination of the call. The good news was that I am pretty sure that I didn't hurt the feelings of the lady to whom I was speaking. Although I suspect that if the woman  who originally recorded all the bits and pieces of script, she might wonder about my reaction. Why should I take it so personally? She didn't. And from now on, their droid will talk to my droid. Until it escalates. With lasers.