A Nation in Handcuffs I was told yesterday that we would all be waking up to a new America today. This was, as you can imagine, due to yesterday’s indictment announcement about Donald Trump, the ex and 45th president. The word handcuff is getting used an inordinate amount today, mostly in the conjecture of whether Trump is likely to be forced to suffer a perp walk in handcuffs in addition to the obligatory fingerprinting and…
Oh Boy! No Joy I have now watched over an hour of news on MSNBC about the indictment of former president Donald Trump by a Manhattan criminal grand jury. It’s been quite a show as I have sequentially watched MSNBC hand this piece of raw journalistic meat around three anchors and a countless number of pundits including presidential scholars, legal analysts, political and campaign analysts in New York, Washington D.C. and Florida. I have watched…
Birch Ain’t Beer As the judicial system of the United States narrows in on Donald Trump from several simultaneous sides, not surprisingly and sticking to form, he is further revving up his anti-establishment rhetoric to save himself and in so doing he is predictably getting the full support of his base. That base had shrunk over the course of the last three years, but sure enough, there are signs that the impending legal battles are…
Into the Heavens Several years ago when I was teaching at Cornell, I did what people do on big college campuses, I faked my way into a parking spot, this time at the Statler Inn valet parking, pretending to be attending some function in the ballroom with other guests. What I was really doing was avoiding a long uphill walk or bus ride to one of the distant parking lots at the expense of a…
Tik-Tik-Tock, China’s on the Block My son Tom made his chops at Shake Shack a few years ago by bringing his Gen Z perspective to their marketing department by suggesting that they would benefit by using TikTok for getting their product message out to the young target market that they wanted to attract. He had been using the TikTok app to generate personal mini videos that gave him a creative outlet for his video making…
Chinese Menu We have just seen the conclusion of a pow-wow between Xi Jianping of China and Vladimir Putin of Russia. In theory this should be no big deal since the dynamic duo have met together over 25 times (I heard a pundit say it was 40 times, but I can only verify 25 or so of those), and that’s a lot. That speaks to a number of things, not the least of which is…
Forget Paris In 1995, Billy Crystal wrote, directed, produced and starred in a movie for which he enlisted Debra Winger as his love interest. That movie was called Forget Paris and it gets a modest 6.5 rating on IMDb, but is actually a very funny and somewhat poignant movie about life and love and how hard it is to expect that things don’t move on in life, whether we want them to or not. Who…
The Worm Comes Home to Roost Worms are not terribly likable beings. The ones in the ground seem pretty harmless and some people, mostly organic gardeners, will tell you about all the good things that worms do for biodiversity and eco-balance. The ones that find their way into our bodies in various ways are a lot less pleasant, whether causing a crescent mark on the head of some ten-year-old Opey or being the subject of…
All Quiet on the Western Front, but Not So Sunny The Oscar season is upon us again and as I glanced down the list of nominees for the various big awards, I saw films that I have seen and admired, films I have seen and thought were not worthy and even a film that I have tried to watch twice and cannot get into despite being told its sooooo good. But one movie completely slipped…
ES-Jesus We are leaving Rome today and taking the day to transit to Cairo to start our Egyptian leg of the trip. If anticipation is a big part of any trip, we now have anticipation coming out of our ears. I’ve always wondered how mountain climbers feel when they are hanging out at Camp 4, preparing for the summit. They are acclimating and preparing themselves for the most important and probably most dangerous part of…