Sports Day

Spirit Week. That time of year again. It came a little early, but maybe it has to do with the cycle of the moon, or students and teachers desperate to find the end of the year. Tuesday was Sports Day, a thankful respite from Monday's Pajama Day. I prepared the night before by pawing through my drawer full of jerseys: Baseball, Basketball, Hockey, and Football. College and Professional. There's even a Roma Wind soccer jersey in there. As I began the process of final selection for the day, I was struck by the amount of money I had invested over the years in the shirts worn by millionaires. Not even. The replicas of shirts won by millionaires.
I lingered over my Denver Broncos jerseys. I own a pair of John Elway replicas, and a Peyton Manning. I bought them to commemorate their skills on the field and their ability to win Super Bowls for the Broncos. My team. Well, their team I suppose. The team I support mos frequently by purchasing their swag. Both men have since retired from the game of professional football, but John Elway has maintained a presence nearby as General Manager of the Broncos, and while Peyton continues to sling the occasional pizza instead of the occasional pigskin, he has been mentioned as a potential political candidate because of his personable nature and charisma. In January he went to speak to the Republican leadership types, no doubt sharing his vision for the future. Or something like that.
Just recently, John Elway used Denver Broncos stationary to write a letter endorsing Neil Gorsuch for the Supreme Court. It's part of a mutual admiration society, to hear John tell it. And did this make me throw out those Broncos jerseys in a fit of pique? Nope. Because this is how the world works: Those who can afford to be Republicans tend to go ahead and do just that. Like a force of nature.
Meanwhile, in the town where I currently live, the Oakland Raiders are getting ready to pack up and move to Las Vegas. The working stiffs who scrimp and save for those seats in the Black Hole will be most disappointed. All those kids dressed silver and black for Sports Day will just have to reckon on this as another business decision. Nothing personal.
I miss Pajama Day already.

So Sorry

Let me first apologize to anyone who is coming to Entropical Paradise for actual news. This is not a news site. Think of this instead as a great, wide reflecting pool in front of the tower of noise that is everyday life. The service I imagine that I am providing is a commercial break in the midst of the rest of the uproar. If I stir anything up, it was already that way when I got to it, I promise. I write most of this stuff days in advance, so if I happen to be throwing gas on any fires I assume they are already under control before I do anything incendiary.
That sounds a little lame, doesn't it? When you've been at this gig as long as I have been, you kind of expect to step on a few toes. I know I do when I get that anonymous comment that takes me to task for spouting opinions about subjects about which I know nothing. The position of prepositions, for example. The difference between discrete and discreet. Simon Le Bon's solo work. Subjects that strike me in the moment as worth a few paragraphs and then off I go, creating a narrative that fits my mood at that moment. It is not what would be described as responsible journalism. But what would one expect from somebody with a creative writing degree?
Maybe this explains why it took so long for the folks at InfoWars to get around to apologize for their comments surrounding and supporting the "Pizzagate" controversy. During the waning moments of the 2016 election, there was a bizarre story floated out there about a child sex-trafficking ring being run out of a Washington D.C. pizzeria somehow linked to Democratic challenger Hillary Clinton. Sounds creepy enough, and certainly no one with an automatic weapon would show up weeks later to shoot up the place and fee the poor kids who were trapped inside.
Except they did and now the tough guys at InfoWars would like you to know that they are sorry for spreading such inane babble as if it were real news. “I want our viewers and listeners to know that we regret any negative impact our commentaries may have had on Mr. Alefantis, Comet Ping Pong, or its employees,” he said. “We apologize to the extent our commentaries could be construed as negative statements about Mr. Alefantis or Comet Ping Pong, and we hope that anyone else involved in commenting on Pizzagate will do the same thing.” Mister Alefantis is the owner and proprietor of the restaurant involved. The guy who got it into his head showed up in December. It's March now. I guess deadlines work differently when you're in the "truth" business. 
Now back to work defining reality for the rest of us.  

Mise En Scene

I went out to the movies with my family over the weekend. We used to do this more when we all three lived in the same city, but having the kid in town enabled us to go out as a group. We went to see Logan, the "last" in the Hugh Jackman Wolverine saga. We laughed, we cried, and winced a little at the carnage. We all knew what we were getting into, since this wasn't our first rodeo with the berserker with adamantium claws. And an anger management issue. It was my son, interestingly enough, who brought up the level of mayhem first.
He wondered if it was truly necessary to make an R-rated comic book movie, or if this was a response to the success of last year's Deadpool, which made a point of going over the top to make its own place in super hero extremes. The audience for those scientifically or genetically enhanced has grown over the years to create a place where truth and justice aren't the only things we need for the American Way. We need some splatter. Some compound fractures. Some head shots.
As the paterfamilias, I chose to take the counter argument: Maybe this is the only way we can get to the place where we start to understand the struggles of a super hero. When a simple sneeze or hiccup during a handshake could result in somebody's arm getting torn off, Losing one's temper when one has the proportionate strength of an insect could cause some real trauma. Maintaining relationships, as a result, would be difficult if not impossible. And didn't we all need to know exactly what it looked like when Wolverine healed himself of those machine gun wounds?
Maybe not, but we are also living in a world that has increased access to video of carnage generated by non-super heroes. Whether it is security feeds or Facebook, we are gifted each day with death and dismemberment that are just a click away. In order to compete, Hollywood must push the boundaries of what might once have been good taste, much in the same way they once felt the need to expand their screens to ridiculous proportions to compete with the new square box of television. A couple of months ago, I watched Warren Beatty's Bonnie and Clyde. On a television that was manufactured to reflect those giant screens of yesteryear. The finale, where Warren and Faye Dunaway are ambushed and cut to ribbons by machine gun fire was still terrifying in its brutality, but felt at the same time just a little tame. I have seen so many worse things since then, on TV and on the big screen.
Did it need to be R? I understand my son's point, but I also know that we live in an unrated world where we are just as likely to burst into song and dance as we are to cut someone in half with our razor sharp claws. And the scariest part of all is this: we haven't seen it all yet.

Rescue Heroes

Here's a list:
Justin Amash 
Jim Jordan
Dave Brat 
Rob Wittman
Leonard Lance 
Ileana Ros-Lehtinen
Warren Davidson 
Andy Harris 
Thomas Garrett 
Mark Sanford
Randy Weber 
Jaime Herrera Beutler
Mark Amodei 
Rick Crawford 
John Katko
Mark Meadows 
Brian Fitzpatrick
Glenn Thompson
Ted Budd
Don Young
Rod Blum
Scott Perry
David Young
Frank A. LoBiondo
Daniel Donovan
Louie Gohmert
Walter B. Jones
Bill Posey
Jody Hice 
David McKinley 
Paul A. Gosar
Ted Yoho 
Charlie Dent
Chris Smith
Mo Brooks 
Raúl R. Labrador 
Thomas Massie 
Rodney Frelinghuysen

These are the Republican Representatives whose likely "no" votes on the American  Care Act caused a certain amount of an uproar in Washington D.C. last week. Unwilling to jump in a line and vote for a bill that was seven years in the making and limped up Capitol Hill leaking fluids and gasping for air, these folks did their job: They chose to stand by what was best for their constituents. They represented. Nice job, ladies and gentlemen. Now, back to work. 

Not Kidding

A long time ago, there was this kerjillionaire who bought and sold all kinds of things with reckless abandon. He had lots of different wives and girlfriends, but that didn't keep his name out of the discussion of potential presidential candidates back in the day when he was at the height of his powers and possessions. Among the properties he got his hands on was a major league baseball team. Are you starting to formulate a guess? Another of his acquisitions was a vault full of old movies. The kind they used to make in black and white. You remember Ted Turner, right?
It was back in the 1980's when he started receiving a lot of flak for the way he handled these cinema gems. He ran them on his cable TV stations and stuck commercials in them. He even went so far as colorizing them. Much to the shock and dismay of film fans across the planet, he handed over such classics as The Maltese Falcon and Topper to the purveyors of the new science of digital film manipulation. Back then, critics insisted this was tantamount to painting a mustache on the Mona Lisa. Ted's response? "Last time I checked, I own those films." Imagining a world where owning the Mona Lisa gave someone carte blanche to deface it leads me to 2017. 
"Hey, look, in the meantime, I guess, I can't be doing that badly, because I'm president and you're not. You know." These are the words of "President" Trump this past week to conclude a typically meandering interview to Time Magazine. This was his way of setting the record straight. Having squatter's rights on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is all he needs to paint a mustache on the White House. And the Constitution. And the presidency. Whispy orange mustaches everywhere. Or those ubiquitous red baseball caps. 
It seems entirely likely that once a human being rises to a certain level of power or income they are no longer able to connect to what made them essentially human. Their DNA is altered by hanging round with sycophants and stacks of cash that make it hard to see the forest or the trees. It might also be true that this evolutionary process is necessary to generate a being who is capable of believing that they are truly in charge of all the knobs, bells and whistles on this ship of state. I would not be the first person to suggest that there is something wrong with anyone who deemed themselves worthy of leading the free world. It takes a peculiar kind of arrogance. 
But not this kind. 
For the record, Turner says he still misses Jane Fonda, And if you want to see a bunch of old movies in their pristine, un-colorized state, tune into Turner Classic Movies. We have another thirty years to discover Trump's regrets. 

Passe

It was my wife, CEO of rainbows and wrapping things in white light at our house, who suggested that being an ax murderer is passe. "Who does that anymore?" she asked in her own inimitable fashion. This may have been a line of questioning brought about from watching one too many episodes of The Walking Dead. For those of you who are unfamiliar with that show, there are a bunch of survivors of a zombie apocalypse fighting off the requisite zombies that come along with that apocalypse. Over time, these rugged individuals have determined that in the interest of saving ammunition and not wanting to stir up a nest of shambling flesh eaters, they will dispatch the monsters with knives, hammers or even an ax. Practical and efficient, the guns are saved for those moments when they are overwhelmed or if they meet up with other survivor types who want to take their guns or canned tomatoes.
Technically, this zombie killing can't really be classified as murder. If you happen to be a member of the undead, killing you a second time falls into the realm of double jeopardy and as a result. all those lopped off limbs and crushed skulls add up to self-preservation instead of jail time. The idea that zombies are, or were, people too gets little air time. Ax murdering is now pest control.
Someone forgot to tell James Harris Jackson.
Mister Jackson, who is introduced in most news accounts of his crime as "an army vet," killed sixty-six year old Timothy Caughman on Wednesday. He did this with a knife. In New York City. Jackson said he took a bus from Maryland to New York because it is "the media capital of the world," and he wanted to make a statement. The fact that Mister Caughman was black may have something to do with his statement, but it might also have had something to do with how far from the track Mister Jackson's trolley had slipped. Eschewing the assault weapons and the current weapon of choice among insane nitwits, motor vehicles, James Harris Jackson apparently wanted the world to see his willingness to carve up a defenseless fellow human being as some sort of declaration of racial superiority. He took the time to make all his insane nitwit justification on a laptop that he carried along with the cutlery he intended to use in support of this insane nitwit justification.
Jackson hadn't made the leap that some of us out here already have: The survivors of the zombie apocalypse are the Walking Dead, not the zombies themselves. Apparently, he has been dead for a long time already. Taking someone with him is adding insult to idiocy.

More Stuff

"We'll be right back with more stuff."
That was the promise for which I sat still, in front of my parents' TV, waiting for The Gong Show to return from commercial break. I didn't want to miss a second. This was as real as television got back in the seventies, or at least for me. I watched singers, dancers, singing dancers, magicians and a steady stream of physical oddities that never ceased to amuse/nauseate. I watched them all, waiting for that moment when one of the celebrity judges would be moved to rise from their seat, with over-sized mallet in hand, and interrupt the act with the eponymous gong. 
Thanks to the Gong Show, I was introduced to such luminaries as Rip Taylor, Jaye P. Morgan, and Murray Langston. I know, I know: Who is Murray Langston? It is not surprising that you don't know him since he was the Unknown Comic. The Gong Show was also responsible for keeping the careers of Jamie Farr and Arte Johnson alive in between guest appearances on The Love Boat. 
And there was Milton DeLugg and the Band With a Thug. Gene Gene the Dancing Machine. And there was Chuck. Introduced once upon a time by Carol Burnett: "And now, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to introduce a man with the charm of Cary Grant, good looks of Robert Redford, and the acting skills of Laurence Olivier. I'd like to meet that man, but until then, I'm stuck with Chuck Barris." I didn't mind being stuck with Chuck Barris. Even if all he had done was created The Newlywed Game. Even if he had only written Freddy Cannon's hit, "Palisades Park." Even if he had only been an assassin for the CIA. I wouldn't mind being stuck with Chuck Barris. 
Sure, you could say that Chuck helped lower our standards with his gonging and Treasure Hunts and $1.98 Beauty Show. I probably wouldn't argue, but Chuck Barris offered us a chance to see ourselves on television. He offered me a chance to see what it would be like if I hosted a game show. He also introduced me to The Mystic Knights of Oingo Boingo. And Paul Reubens before he was Pee Wee Herman. These are gifts enough. Thank you, Chuck. You stomped on the Terra, and brought me all even more stuff. Aloha.