Nerd

I went to see the new Planet of the Apes movie, much in the same way that I felt compelled to go see the new Spider Man movie. I'm a fan, okay? Not that either one carried a particular stigma or an embarrassment to my family and friends. Lots of people went to see both of them. Seriously. Not just nerd-types like me.
Oops. What a giveaway. "Nerd-types like me."
Yes, I saved up my nickels and dimes and dollars until I got to fifty and could go buy my very own official Planet of the Apes gorilla mask. I went with the gorilla because Cornelius just seemed a little too on the nose and the orangutan was never going to be as convincing. Once I got home, I realized that if I wanted to move the mouth effectively, I needed to stuff newspaper in the back to force my face into the front. I also invested a couple dollars in eye-liner which I used to approximate the skin tone around my eyes to match. Sometimes I even brushed "hair" on the back of my hands to give me that real ape-y look.
Nerd-type. By this time, I had already bored my friends to tears recreating scenes from the five original films, centering primarily on Escape, since that had the fewest ape parts and the most concerned humans. There was a little more enthusiasm among the guys in my neighborhood for reenacting Conquest, since that played out more like a war movie. I couldn't get many takers for a staging of Battle. Ape-interest had dropped off to next to nothing by that time.
Except for me. I kept watching the TV show. And drinking my orange juice out of my Planet of the Apes plastic mug. I waited for the Apes renaissance that I was sure would come. It was around this time that my parents asked if a family friend might borrow that gorilla mask. Against most of my better instincts, I allowed this to happen. I even sent along some hints about how to really maximize the mask's potential.
The mask never came back. There was some sad story about it being stolen from the back of the car, but it didn't matter. By this time, the magic shop where I had made my purchase had closed, and finding a replacement without Al Gore's Internet was next to impossible. I reconciled myself to a life without a gorilla mask.
That didn't douse the fire I held in my heart for the franchise. I raced out to see Tim Burton's re-vision and massive disappointment in 2001. Mark Wahlberg was better off staring at giant transforming robots than trying to make sense out of this mess.
Then they started making movies with computer generated imagery. No more masks. And they went back to the beginning. Well, sort of, since the beginning of the first five films is really almost the end and the end comes when the planet blows up but three chimpanzees escape and come back to earth to start the whole loop over again.
Nerd-type.
I enjoyed the new Planet of the Apes movie. I won't bore you with the story about the Spider Man costume I had my mom make for me. When I was in high school.
Sigh.

Golden Knob

I got a crown on the molar in the back of the right side. It's good to know that my teeth are squared away, but I am hyper-aware of that corner of my mouth. I had a temporary crown for a few weeks and I consciously avoided chewing things in that quadrant and was oh so very careful about flossing. Now that the permanent crown has been installed, I continue to fret about that one tooth. I understand that it's all part of proper dental care and being a certain age and it would always be better if there were no cavities or fillings or extra bits floating around in there, but the alternative is too frightening to think about. For me, anyway.
And why would I bring this up? Because I am so very tired of talking, writing, thinking, considering, pondering, confronting and dealing with what is happening in my country. There's this great big golden knob that has been dropped into a void and now I can't not think about it. It's there all the time. When I wake up in the morning. When I go to sleep at night. Sitting down to breakfast, lunch or dinner, it's there. Pick up the phone to talk to friends and family and what do we end up discussing? The Golden Knob. It would have been so much nicer if I could have kept that tooth. I grew up with it and it was doing such a fine job, but that particular tooth had a term limit that could not be exceeded. And that's a shame.
At this point, I run the risk of becoming a latter-day Lenny Bruce. Sure, there's plenty of clever bits in here, and I've got miles and miles of funny stories to relate, yet I feel compelled to keep writing about the horrible awful no-good Golden Knob. Each day there is some fresh discomfort or confusion that fills my head with words that scream to be heard.
By whom?
I don't get a lot of argument around here about what I have to say about the Golden Knob. It's distracting, painful, and not conducive to the proper alignment of anyone's mouth. I understand that the end of this metaphor has me sitting in a chair undergoing a painful dental procedure, all of which could have been avoided if I had only been more attentive to the hygiene of my mouth.
What could I have done to avoid the Golden Knob isn't the question. I know that the issues in my non-metaphorical mouth are much easier to deal with than the crisis that faces the mouth that is our country. That one really great, effective tooth isn't coming back, and the void that will most certainly make things worse before it gets better.
Lenny Bruce's solution to his torment was to drag everyone who would listen to him along for the ride. I don't know if I want to do that, but every day brings some new torment to a mouth that was already full.
Suddenly my crown doesn't bother me so very much at all.
Thanks for listening.

Presidential

According to some,  it was “the greatest speech that was ever made to them.” In this case, "them" would be the Boy Scouts of America. And "some" would be our "President." If you asked the Boy Scouts, they would say the reaction to the speech was "mixed." If you asked the tangerine masquerading as our chief executive, he would tell you, “I’d be the first to admit mixed. I’m a guy that will tell you mixed. There was no mix there. That was a standing ovation from the time I walked out to the time I left, and for five minutes after I had already gone. There was no mix.”
This was a speech to a group of Scouts at their annual Jamboree that included  bragging about his election victory, slamming his former opponent Hillary Clinton as well his predecessor, former President Barack Obama, and repeatedly decrying the media for what he deemed unfair coverage. "Oh, and by the way guys, I've got a lot of experience with knots, if you know what I mean." 
Okay. That last bit was my own invention, but I don't suppose it really matters at this point, since invention is the way this administration gets through every hour of every day. Six months after the inauguration that was "“the largest audience ever to witness an inauguration, period,” as announced by White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer no longer has a job as White House Press Secretary. It would be ridiculous at this point to blame Sean. Or maybe not. He could have shrugged his shoulders at some point, and simply said what everyone else was thinking: "I don't know. He told me to come out here and tell you this stuff and we all know that it was not even remotely the case. Sorry." He stood at that podium and maintained his composure for moments at a time until that little vein in his forehead began to scream "aneurysm." That vein serves as the metaphorical Pinocchio's nose of the current regime. Now it's Sandra Huckabee Sanders' turn to brave the potential head implosion that comes with the job of standing in front of a group of eager questioners with nothing but alternative facts to defend. Endlessly. 
When the "President" got up in front of a group of police officers and encouraged them to rough up suspects, "He was just joking." When he stood in front of a group of supporters in Ohio and described the way gangs "take a young, beautiful girl, sixteen, fifteen, and others and they slice them and dice them with a knife because they want them to go through excruciating pain before they die, and these are the animals that we've been protecting for so long." Thanks for the visual, "Mister President." 
What's that? "With the exception of the late, great Abraham Lincoln, I can be more presidential than any president that's ever held this office."
Really? I guess I'll just let Communications Director Anthony "Will You Do The Fandango" Scaramucci handle it. 
Oh. Yeah. That's right. 
Never mind. 

How Long?

Your average weather forecast.
Chance the Rapper's debut mixtape.
Detox from nicotine.
Recreate the Slovenian War For Independence.
Master the skills taught in today's business schools.
Take a seminar on the Epidemiology and Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease and Stroke.

Spend the money you would use on soda or coffee on providing clean water to people that don't have it. 

Take a safari.

Have an anagama wood firing.

Get an acute case of the measles. 

Restriction for young women getting abdominal X-Rays.

Cleanse the sugar from your system.

Experience an introductory meditation course.

Transform your life with the principles of Jack Canfield. 

Make Amish Friendship Bread.

All the time you need to vacate the premises if you fail to pay your rent. 

Tour Tasmania.

These are all things you could experience in the amount of time that Anthony "The Mooch" Scaramucci held down his job as Communications Director for the current occupants of The White House. It was suggested that the turnover in the current regime is somewhat reminiscent of that experienced by Admirals of the Imperial Fleet under Darth Vader's command. Ten days isn't much of a "get to know you" period, but it seems like we all got a pretty good sense of what The Mooch had to offer. 

And so we bid him a fond adieu, and wait another ten days for the next shoe to fall. 

Go Boom

That's what you do when you fall down. You go boom. It used to happen a lot to my son when he was little. He spent most of his toddler years trying to catch up to his enormous cranium. As a result, he was constantly tipping this way and that. I will probably never know if his wandering into the occasional gravity storm was anything out of the ordinary for kids of his age, size, deportment, etc. Any kind of inquiries at the time might have led to more questions on the part of social services, wanting to know how this kid could keep bouncing off of things after a little ice and a kiss on his boo-boo.
It probably has a lot to do with the fact that his father spent a good deal of time falling down for the amusement of others. Sometime in junior high, while watching the Dick Van Dyke Show, that tumbling over a hassock wasn't such an impossible feat. It was just an elongated forward roll, and if you managed a nick or a bruise on the way down or up, it was more than made up for by the shock and awe of your audience. By the time I reached high school, and Chevy Chase had made a legend for himself by tripping and falling over most everything imaginable, I elevated my game by tossing my feet over my head and landing on my back without any particular reason or setup. Often, it simply broke the tension.
The number of times that I did this kind of awful acrobatics along with the regular use of the "I opened the door into my face" bit eventually wore out the concern button on my friends and family. Consequently, when I jumped out of a swing and tore four ligaments in my knee and tried to get up to walk it off and my leg folded up under me like a bad card table, all my friends could do was laugh at my zany antics.
Was it worth it? Well, still more years in the future after I had my knee surgically repaired, I was asked if I had any "special talents" that might win me a free pair of Levis. I told the hosts of this particular promotion that I could recreate the opening of the Dick Van Dyke show. Curious, they asked for a demonstration.
I won the jeans.
Then my son was born, and after a while, he began to appreciate the potential of flinging himself about. So much so that at one school gathering he introduced himself by telling anyone who would listen, "Hi. My name is Donald and I fall down a lot."
So very, very proud.
Then, pushing forward a decade or more later, I am out running, as is my custom. I fail to negotiate a crack in the sidewalk and fall face first to the concrete. Scraped hands and a skinned knee. About a week after that, I encountered another vortex with nearly the same result. No laughs.
Then it occurs to me: Dick Van Dyke didn't always fall over that hassock.
Time to reassert my mastery over gravity.

Due Process

It's not on every police car door, but enough that it becomes something of a meme: To protect and serve. That's what law enforcement officers are here to do. Whether it's enforcing traffic ordinances or checking a four-year-old's house for monsters, Or maybe you'll be charged with taking down a notorious gang, like MS-13. If you are unfamiliar, Fox News calls this group "the gang that scares other gangs." Keeping in mind this comes from the news channel that scares other news channels, and is also the font of all discernible "thought" in the current White House. It comes out of Steve Doocy's mouth and comes out of our "President's" Twitter account. Which would be fine if Steve was using facts or generating policy. He's not. That leaves the heavy lifting to the "President," who let's face it, really isn't up to the task.
How does our "President" propose our nation's law enforcement officers deal with MS-13? Addressing the Suffolk County Police Department on Long Island, he urged them not to be "too nice" when they are "thrown into the back of a paddy wagon." Trump then spoke dismissively of the practice by which arresting officers shield the heads of handcuffed suspects as they are placed in police cars. "I said, 'You could take the hand away, OK?'"
Gales of derisive laughter.
What the giant tab of chewable Vitamin C has not considered is that this is precisely the thing that makes doing a cop's job so difficult. They are connected to the community, extensions of the neighborhoods and streets that they patrol. All that tough talk is great when you're surrounded by a group of heavily armed Secret Service agents, but it doesn't play as well out in the world which the rest of us live. 
The International Association of Chiefs of Police issued a statement just a few hours after the bulbous carrot finished his rant. It said, in part: “The ability of law enforcement officers to enforce the law, protect the public, and guard their own safety, the safety of innocent bystanders, and even those suspected or apprehended for criminal activity is very challenging" said the statement.

“For these reasons, law enforcement agencies develop policies and procedures, as well as conduct extensive training, to ensure that any use of force is carefully applied and objectively reasonable considering the situation confronted by the officers.Law enforcement officers are trained to treat all individuals, whether they are a complainant, suspect, or defendant, with dignity and respect.This is the bedrock principle behind the concepts of procedural justice and police legitimacy.”

Are you listening, Steve Doocy? 

Greatest Hits

It would sound like Elvis
And Springsteen
A little like DEVO
because it's our choice
If you listen carefully
you can hear the words:
People are more
important than things
Everything
takes four hours
and costs
about a hundred dollars
And between the laughter
and the tears
You can hear the magic of
Why not?
It's got a good beat
but it's hard to dance to
Not because we don't
want to
We do
We want to dance
We want to sing
And sometimes
there's harmony
And sometimes
there's a waltz
There are so many moments
that make up a year
a decade
two
They don't all sparkle
and shine
Those grains of sand
stretch out
On the beach
of our life
There are jewels
Why not?
There are roses
Why not?
There is laughter
Why not?
There is you
Why not?