Our Political Banana Peel Back in college, one of my buddies loved the comedian Don Rickles. For those of you who remember him, his schtick was focused on denigrating people of all ethnicities and creeds. Everyone was a hockey puck to him (I never realized a hockey puck was such a lowly item). He had a comment that has always made me laugh. He would find somebody in the audience that he found funny-looking and…
Wearing Your Underwear on the Outside Yesterday, an immigrant brought to this country at a toddler with his twin brother and who has spent the past twenty years as an officer and gentleman in the U.S. Army (as has his twin brother) was maliciously and wantonly accused by Republican members of the House Intelligence Committee of being a disloyal possible double agent for Ukraine. Why was this accomplished and highly decorated war veteran and…
The San Francisco Treat Several months ago I happened to ask my wife to make some Rice-A-Roni for me for dinner. Neither she nor her brother (who was helping with the cooking) took the request literally and they ended up making rice with some spices and other additions that seemed to them to be a far fresher and more interesting dish than anything that might come out of a box. Rice-A-Roni was invented sixty years…
Does Dying Really Hurt? Lawrence stood well over four feet tall. That was his protective armor against a world that enjoyed denigrating people over physical attributes like height, over which people had very little governance. If he had said he was well over five feet tall, that would have been defensive and not at all funny. If he had noted that he was proud to be a short person he would have sounded both defensive…
A Confederacy of Trumpsters I’m hoping that John Kennedy Toole does not roll over in his grave with my borrowing a few words from his posthumous Pulitzer-Prize-Winning work of fiction (one of only four posthumous awards in over one hundred years). I can’t help myself with this title, it came to me tonight as I’ve been listening to the latest shenanigans of the Ukraine-based Impeachment Inquiries in the U.S. House of Representatives. Even Lindsey Graham…
When is a Lie Not a Lie? I’m sure that some of you will LOL about this, but I really do try not to write every blog story about how outraged I am about Donald Trump and the gang of Republican lawmakers and administration cronies that continue to stand up for the man. Today the situation has yet again shifted. As the parade of credible, patriotic career diplomats and intelligence professionals gets longer and longer…
The Chill in the Air As I walked my 200 steps to work today, I was reminded that the winds in lower Manhattan get pretty crazy through the canyons of buildings. It is pretty much windy all year long, but today it was windy with a distinct chill of the impending season. It was sunny and the sky was blue, like waking up in the Dolomites or Alps in the morning, but the Weather…
Buttered Rubber I’ve never been much of a seafood fan. I have found myself in plenty of situations over the years where it was impossible to avoid eating seafood. Obviously, there is seafood and there is fishy seafood. I’ve enjoyed plenty of shrimp cocktail, fish & chips, Haddock fish sticks, Fillet-o-Fish sandwiches, crab cakes and even an occasional light, white broiled sole or swordfish or other flaky fish. What I steadfastly avoid is oily…
Why Don’t He Write? We all remember Dances With Wolves, that wonderful Kevin Costner epic about life on the plains for a post-Civil-War soldier who befriends the local Indian tribe and realizes that they are better people than most western settlers he knows. Costner gets to his lonely and desolate frontier fort by means of a buggy ride from a noxious frontiersman who eats pickled eggs and farts loudly. He has one great line as…
I Think I’m Going to Cry Again Kim and I enjoy watching Michael Douglas and Akan Arkin in The Kominsky Method on Netflix. They are Hollywood friends of a certain age even though Arkin is 85 and Douglas is ten years younger. I am ten years younger again than Douglas, but I find this show hilarious. Maybe that’s because it’s written by Chuck Lorre, creator of The Big Bang Theory, and a man of…