Mexico is building a wall!

Posted on by under Generic Rant, Original writing

As one of her first moves as Mexico’s new president, Claudia Sheinbaum has declared that she plans to build a wall along the border with the USA and she expects them to pay for it.

“We proud Mexican citizens are tired of all these people coming from the US ruining our country. They send rapists, mentally ill, liars, felons, misogynists, sexual predators, and bigots. Admittedly, the only person fitting all those descriptions is the newly elected president of that morally bankrupt country. But with that buffoon in charge, can more like him be far behind? Stay out of our country! They’ve never even had a woman running the joint. How backwards is that? Hello, losers! It’s the 21st century!”

They’re eating the Taco Bells!

That’s not all that concerns her. She continued, “As if all that weren’t enough, they’re going to come down here and try to open up Taco Bells. Taco Bell!! In Mexico! Are they kidding? Why not open a Red Lobster in Maine? Or Papa John’s in Naples? We’re Mexican! We know how Mexican food is supposed to taste and that ain’t it!”

She concluded by declaring, “Keep your crappy food and your corrupt leaders and their reprehensible ways out of Mexico. Stay behind that wall and pay up when the bill comes!”

Two candidates…

Posted on by under Generic Rant

One of the candidates…

…has promised us we’ll never have to (read: “get to”) vote again.

…has already fomented an attempted coup, which he later called a “love fest”. Six people lost their lives and 174 police were injured in the love fest.

…sat watching TV while everyone around him begged him to call off his mob of supporters who were on a rampage in the Capitol threatening to hang his Vice President.

…has threatened military action against his opponents.

…agreed with a supporter who told him that nuclear war isn’t so bad because Hiroshima and Nagasaki are back.

…suggested one of his opponents should stand before a firing squad.

…claims to know more than anyone about technology, drones, courts, campaign finance, TV ratings, ISIS, social media, trade, visas, renewable energy, taxes, debt, money, borders, Democrats, the economy, and a whole lot more. But he knows nothing about his own party’s Project 2025, David Duke or white supremacy, or the Proud Boys.

…repeats unsubstantiated stories he reads on social media and never recants when they are proven false.

…has been selling sneakers, coins, bibles, crypto, watches, and a whole lot more while campaigning.

…has been convicted of 34 felonies and lost many civil cases, being fined hundreds of millions of dollars.

The other candidate…

…is a woman. The US has had as many female leaders as the Taliban.

Goodbye, Teri…

Posted on by under Generic Rant, Movies

Yesterday, entertainment lost a massive and not-nearly-appreciated-enough talent. Teri Garr was a brilliant actor. Although mostly known for her comedic roles–“Mr. Mom”, “Tootsie”, and “Young Frankenstein” among them–I first discovered her in a small but decidedly dramatic part in the 1974 masterpiece, “The Conversation”. That aspect of her gift was equally on display in “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and “The Black Stallion”. To understand the respect she must have garnered in the industry, you need look no further than the impressive roster of directors who cast her: Coppola, Spielberg, Hughes, Pollack, Brooks. The list goes on.

Her loss hit me at home not only because I’m a huge fan of her body of work but because the cause of her death was a supposedly non-fatal “scum-sucking pig of a disease” (her words), multiple sclerosis, which I also have. It makes me cherish each day more and trust God more for the future.

Well, I mean… So…

Posted on by under Generic Rant

Everyone has verbal tics that pepper their conversation. There’s no shame in that. The two most prevalent in my speech are “I mean”—this happens to be a favorite among professional athletes as well, so I’m in good company—and “well”. The latter, I’ve noticed, is most often the opening of (too) many of my sentences. (The other common sentence kickoff is the useless syllable “so”. Pay attention and you’ll hear it everywhere.) It’s always been a mystery why I start so many of my statements with “well”.

Until now.

Like so many Boomers, I grew up on innocent, quaint, simple, yet outrageously funny TV fare such as “The Andy Griffith Show”, “The Dick van Dyke Show”, and the Citizen Kane of 60’s sitcoms, “Leave it to Beaver”. It was mostly in syndication by the time I came to truly appreciate it. I appreciate it even more now. While LitB (as us trendy Boomers call it) has been mostly written off as hopelessly naive, simpleminded, and outdated, it remains (to my mind) crazy funny and more edgy than most people give it credit for. Hey, it’s still streaming over 60 years later. That’s gotta count for something.

More to the point… (What was the point, anyway? Oh, yeah!) I was watching LitB a little while back and noticed that both Wally and The Beaver start most of their sentences the same way! To be more precise, they start them with a strangely abbreviated version of the word by saying, “W’l”. It’s not clear why they eliminated the “e” and second “l”. (Or was it the first “l”? No matter.) Perhaps they wanted to shorten the dialog so they could use the extra few seconds to shoehorn in another commercial or two.

Regardless, I’m pretty sure I picked up the whole “well”/”w’l” thing from that show. Along with some solid parenting skills and a lot of laughs.

In case you haven’t noticed (you haven’t, have you!) I’m increasing the frequency of these posts. This is neither for lack of anything better to do on my part or a sudden heightened demand on yours. There are just too darn many things in my backlog to write about. And you are my unfortunate victims. Sorry.

Thank your for you support!

Posted on by under About writing, Generic Rant, Movies

Typos are everywhere. I can’t think of a single book that didn’t have at least one. And I read a lot of books. In fact, a recent novel by one of my favorite authors had at least two. Heck, my books (You know, the ones listed here. 🙂 Ironically, a typo in one of those titles caused Amazon to list it twice! Can you find it?) barely have that many. One of my favorite examples is in the written word in the middle of a movie. You can read about that one in this post.

Sometimes, it’s not clear whether an error is a typo or whether it’s just ignorance of the English language. Here’s a prime example from an article about a local community, which bragged that it…

…is infamous for its support of our local artists, writers, and musicians.

In a world where literally and metaphorically have become synonyms, why not famous and infamous? (I know those two aren’t antonyms or even mutually exclusive, e.g. Trump, but hopefully you get the point. They’re way different.)

The most common typo, however, the grandaddy of them all (and as a grandaddy, I assure you I know what I’m talking about) is the substitution of “you” for “your”. This mistake is virtually (not literally) omnipresent in cyberspace. I swear I don’t read an email, blogpost or even legitimate article that doesn’t have this failure. The most recent I can remember is this comment I saw on an article I read not too long ago:

Thanks for writing you article.

I don’t recall if the article itself had the error. I hope so.

Amaaaaaazing!

Posted on by under Generic Rant, Movies

In this previous post, I pointed out the absurdity of the overuse of the virtually meaningless word “amazing”. It’s everywhere and serves as a putdown as easily as it does a buildup. Case in point:

In a very bad movie I recently watched (yeah, I watch a lot of bad movies), the following line was delivered by a person who had just learned of a loved one’s acceptance into a prestigious college:

“That’s amazing! I’m not surprised, though.”

She was amazed but not surprised. How does that work? To add to the inanity, another character, upon hearing the same news, says, “That’s incredible!”

The same news is incredible and amazing but not surprising. Furthermore, it’s also a nasty, though thinly disguised insult. If someone is amazed and/or surprised at your success, it means they weren’t expecting it, i.e. you’re a loser.

Who writes, and worse, who approves these scripts???

[As a follower of Jesus, I’m even more disheartened by the devaluation of the word “amazing”. The classic and wonderful hymn “Amazing Grace” loses much of its impact when the adjective is rendered impotent.]

Signs, signs, everywhere signs…

Posted on by under photos

Last time it was a “thot dump”; today it’s a photo dump. (I suppose I should call this a “foto dump” to be consistent with my previous lazy Madison Ave. spelling style.) As with my post ideas, which occasionally back up like a bad plumbing job, my photo bin overfloweth. This will clean out a bunch of the backlog, but without the nasty sewage odor.

The topic today, as evidenced by the post title*, is “signs”. These are signs I’ve seen over time that have caught my attention as interesting for various unrelated reasons. Maybe it’s just me. You be the judge.

I’ve never seen such a blatant disregard for beach hygiene! We all know it’s gonna happen, but why encourage it?
I’m not a beer drinker but even I can appreciate this little bit of restaurant humor.
It’s hard to read with the reflection where it is, but right above the message to “come on in”, there’s a sign saying the place is closed. An invitation to thieves, perhaps?
Sure, but I bet they won’t tell me which I am!
I’ve seen a lot of motorcycles on the road and this blanket statement is patently untrue of many.
The worst of both worlds in this post-Covid work environment. You have to drive to work, but you can’t get out of your car. Or maybe they want you to sit in the empty space.
All your flooring needs maybe, but don’t count on any spelling help. Last I checked, “carpet” and “care” start with the same letter anyway. Why this nonsense?
This is just plain cruel. The fish are in the water, for Pete’s sake, but you aren’t allowed anywhere near it! I suppose if you had long enough fishing line…

* For the non-Boomers in the crowd, this is a reference to an absolutely fantastic song from 1971 by a sadly underappreciated Canadian group, The Five Man Electrical Band. Then again, maybe latter day musical aficionados will recognize it. Not long ago, I saw a photo of yet another sign saying “Hiring is so bad, long haired freaky people are encouraged to apply.” Gotta love that!

Thot Dump*

Posted on by under Generic Rant, Movies, Original writing

From time to time, it becomes necessary to do a Roto-Rooter® job on my brain. Ideas, thoughts, whims, and other random ephemera (to borrow a phrase from the subtitle of my 9th book) clog up my scarred brain and need to be snaked out before they leak all over the place and/or my brain backs up. Either one would not be pretty.

Let me now foist some of these notions on your innocent and unsuspecting mind:

Not long ago I watched (for about the 14th time) the original “Terminator” movie. You know, the one where Ahnold is a bad guy and he says “I’ll be bahk!” As often happens after multiple viewings of the same movie, something new and absurd caught my eye. Sarah Connor and her protector, Kyle, escape from the police station that the Terminator had just gone bahk to and, well, terminated. For the first time, I noticed the vehicle they escaped in. It’s an AMC Gremlin! I love it! Could there be a more incongruous mode of transportation in such a movie? I’ve since learned that there are at least three Gremlins in different scenes in the movie. Can you spot them? (Now we know what happened to the rest of the car, toots.**)

You might see me as just another blogger whose writings captivate you with flights of literary genius, thus bringing you back time and again to reach new heights of reading ecstasy, but I’m a lot more than that. In all humility, I must tell you I’m a worker of miracles. In fact, I perform such miracles almost every day when I make a huge deal out of nothing at all. Ask my wife, she’ll tell you.***

My favorite activity (or at least one of my top three favorites) is something I do every chance I get. Whenever I see babies, the younger the better, I try to catch their eyes. Babies have an incredible ability to lock onto your eyes and never let go until it’s impossible to maintain visual contact because of distance or angle. They stare at me (or you!) as if I’m the most fascinating thing on earth. It’s great for the ego but I always wonder what’s going on in their impressionable, developing minds. I hope it’s not, “Wow, there’s a strange looking dude.” But I don’t care what it is. I just love looking into those beautiful, innocent, inquisitive eyes.

One last question: How is it that saying “something is up” means the same as “something is going down”? Just asking.

* See what I did? I shortened “thoughts” to “thots”, thus saving valuable time and electrons. Of course I’ve blown both by adding this asinine comment but, hey, you can’t have everything.

** Obscure reference to old Gremlin commercial from the 70’s. Yeah, I’m that old. And more. Sadly, I can’t find the commercial anywhere except in the dark recesses of my dark (and getting darker every day) mind.

*** She’ll also tell you that I’m adept at the equally miraculous feat of turning molehills into mountains.

Breaking the Rules Pays Off

Posted on by under About writing, Movies

If you’ve read my latest book, “Scrolled”, you might remember a note in the “The True Parts” back matter that indicated there was an extremely slim autobiographical aspect to the protagonist, one Jack Gregory. Like him, I was once an aspiring screenwriter. While I still like to work on screenplays, I harbor little hope of having one purchased and/or produced, two supremely distinct and totally independent steps in the process.

Part of my obsession, er, um, pursuit was attending film festivals. The best fest for us wannabes is the Austin Film Festival, the definitive writers’ festival. (I had some success in their screenplay competition but evidently not enough.) One of the primary attractions to AFF was the opportunity to present (“pitch”) ideas to established industry professionals. One year, I pitched my idea for “Scrolled” to such a panel.

It tanked. Big time.

Why? I was told it broke two of the cardinal rules of screenwriting:

  1. No stories about writers. Of any kind.
  2. No doing-something-that-I-won’t-mention-here-because-it’s-too-much-of-a-spoiler-for-my-book-as-well-as-the-film-to-be-named-later.

Imagine my surprise then, when one of this year’s nominees for the Academy Award for Best Picture broke the same two rules. Not only that, but it actually won the award for best adapted screenplay!

“American Fiction” is a great movie with a terrific screenplay.(*) But it broke rules that I was told beyond a doubt disqualified my script from consideration! It only goes to show what I pontificated on nearly ten years ago in this blog post, to wit: Rules are meant to be broken. Within reason.

There, I feel better now. Sort of.

(*) Please note that I am in no way comparing my humble sample of silliness called “Scrolled” to that truly great script. But you can buy it and judge for yourself. 🙂