Thanksgiving Blog Post

Happy holiday and paid time off (well at least for some of us), everyone!  I don't know yet where I'll gorge myself shamefully on Thursday, but the Friday after I will be creating pizzas at a class in a classy cooking ware shop.

A comedy troupe will entertain the class as we cook, improvising on our suggestions, I hear.  I plan to ask for a depiction of a former supervisor of mine, Eva the Brawn, a grammar Nazi who hated commas when they were used to accent an emphasized thought or meaningful pause in prose.  I suspect the comma is used that way throughout Mein Kampf, unfortunately, I didn't have copy in the office at the time to point it out, to my eternal regret.

Have at her, comedy troupe, and with goosestepping punch lines.

Satanic Comic Relief

I've been bantering via text lately with a friend of mine nicknamed Father Satan.  He was branded with that mark years ago by a liberal socialist theologian duly nicknamed Baby Judas, but that's another story.  My nickname is Sir Rotten, because of my green hair and lack of dental care.

Anyway, Father Satan mocked me the other day when I stated that current pop music is lousy.  It has no social impact, no soul, lots of nothing, compared to the music of my and his youth.  I was there when Sgt Pepper was released, not to mention the first Black Sabbath and Sex Pistols albums.  All timeless, I said. How does Bruno Mars' first album measure with those?

How do we know they won't be timeless later, Father Satan snorted.  When I offered the opinion that the 1980s was the last great era of lively pop music, he said he could find the Thompson Twins and Flock of Seagulls in dollar bins at record stores (but what about Devo and Adam Ant, huh?). The music of today is just as valid as in those days, he tells me.  

On another topic, Father Satan later complained that millennial writers are blabbering about the aesthetics of superhero movies in a manner that would be alarming, if it weren't so precious.  So, I texted, wait a minute, you criticize me for saying millennials compare their lousy music to the classic eras while biting at them for extolling Justice League (which I saw this past weekend, pretty good flick) and Marvel movies?

Of course, that threw him.  He could only snort that my use of the word "lousy" was subjective.  Uh, okay ...

Finally, I said I'd send him some review material about the extremely lousy Taylor Swift that is so precious that it is alarming.  He told me she considers herself an empowered woman, and may very well be so.  So here is the debut of my retort for my blog readers:

"Her father, Scott Kingsley Swift, was a financial advisor, and her mother, Andrea Gardner Swift (née Finlay), was a homemaker who had previously worked as a mutual fund marketing executive."

Now that's what I call empowerment that you can take to the bank.  Think of what John Lennon could have done with that kind of empowerment ... THREE Bentleys instead of one, for example.

"Swift spent most of the past year off the radar, dropping out of the media hustle – a major challenge for a star this relentless about sharing her feelings, not to mention her cats' feelings. Taylor turning off her phone was the equivalent of Leonard Cohen moving to a Zen monastery for five years."

While Leonard Cohen was at the monastery for five years, his manager ripped off his $5 million pension.  If this timeless poet, singer and novelist would have known a good financial advisor and mutual fund marketing executive, this would have never happened, let alone if they were his parents.  Obviously, instead of following a disciplined spiritual path, he should have just turned off his smartphone.

"But because she's Taylor Swift, she can't stop being her own turbulent, excessive, exhausting and gloriously extra self. Make no mistake, this girl's love affair with drama is alive and well."

This girl's love affair with cats is alive and well.  She's well-known, after all, for her dramatic catfights with Katy Perry, another nonentity of today's pop scene.  Meow, hiss!

"Gems like "Dancing With Our Hands Tied" and "New Year's Day" are long-term love stories that don't end with a scarf hidden in a drawer. As she sings in "Call It What You Want," "Nobody's heard from me for months/I'm doing better than I ever was." The songs are full of everyday details – spilling wine in the bathtub, building blanket forts. But they also explore a timely question: What happens to your identity when you step back and stop defining yourself by how strangers see you?"

Can anybody tell me what a "blanket fort" is?  Are they electric blankets?  Did she spill a vintage fortified wine like Wild Irish Rose in the bathtub?  In a future album, will she use the lyric "gimme a pint of rosie with a skirt" and will millennial writers ponder that lyric, trying to figure out if "skirt" is a measure of Tay's identity?  (It's actually a paper bag.)

"For that deluxe touch of self-expression, Tay pivots to print with the long-awaited Reputation magazines. Both 72-page issues are full of her hand-written lyrics, photos, poetry ("May your heart remain breakable/but never by the same hand twice") and watercolor paintings, packaged in faux-tabloid headlines from "Catitude: Meredith Is Out Of Control!" to "Who Is Olivia's Real Father?" "

Tay is stealing from the faux newspaper headlines written in the cover art for Jethro Tull's "Thick as a Brick".  Her well-appointed father probably suggested it as a swell idea from the days of "Dad Rock".  Of course, Tay likes to steal: she apparently pivoted away the concept from Beyonce's "Lemonade" for one of her latest videos.

 I haven't seen either one: these days, I'm watching the classic movie Sign O the Times of a Prince concert, who danced better than Beyonce and certainly better than Tay, by the way.

Oh, God, I've had enough.  Taylor Swift is lousy, lousyer, lousyest.  I mean, do I have to include some of her lyrics to make my final point?  Sigh ....

Love's a game / Want to play?"
- "Got a long list of ex-lovers / They'll tell you I'm insane"
- "Find out what you want / Be that girl for a month"
- "I can make all the tables turn"
- "Boys only want love if it's torture / Don't say I didn't... warn you"
- "Darling, I'm a nightmare dressed like a daydream"

My point well taken, match over, Father Satan.


Fredo, My Hero

One of my favorite characters in the first two Godfather films (not to mention films in general) is Fredo, the older brother of the gangster family, as portrayed memorably by John Cazale.

This poor buffoon wanders through Godfather II trying to figure out why nobody in the family is treating him with the respect due to an older brother, especially in Sicilian tradition.  Instead, his younger brother Michael Corleone is running the business like a barracuda in a shark tank, doling out menial tasks to Fredo as a way of fulfilling his duty to take care of his lesser brother.

Instead, Fredo keeps slipping up, dragging himself limply through his empty roles.  He marries an alcoholic, vicious wife.  Operates a squalid brothel.  Learns that you don't need to know a Spanish translation to order a banana daiquiri.  In the end, to try to prove that he is a somebody, he betrays Michael and the family and ends up, literally, sleeping with the fishes.

Some favorite Fredo moments:

• Fredo takes Michael to a sex show where a massively endowed Cuban stallion guy mounts a prostrate prostitute.  "That's why they call him Superman," says Fredo. Michael, who has shot people and ordered executions, is disgusted.
• Calls Michael "Mikey" as one of his last attempts to act as an older brother.
• "You know, mama used to tease me ... you don't belong to me, you were left on the doorstep by gypsies.  Sometimes I think she was right."
• Comprehending the truth of Fredo's betrayal, Michael heads over to him at a Cuban New Years Eve party, grabs his head, plants the kiss of death on his lips, and says "I know it was you, Fredo. You broke my heart."
• Michael Corleone doesn't cry and whine when someone breaks his heart, even when it's his older brother.  He gets even.  To whit:
  Fredo Corleone: I'm your older brother, Mike, and I was stepped over!
  Michael Corleone: That's the way Pop wanted it.
  Fredo Corleone: It ain't the way I wanted it! I can handle things! I'm smart! Not like everybody says... like dumb... I'm smart and I want respect.

Now, I would have said, "you're the dummy, dummy." Michael tells him he doesn't want to see him ever again until their mother dies. Fredo means nothing to him, as if he were ever someone.

• Finally, Fredo's only success in life: "You know when I was your age, I went out to fishing with all my brothers and my father, and everybody. And I was, I was the only one who caught a fish. Nobody else could catch one except me. You know how I did it? Every time I put the line in the water I said a Hail Mary and every time I said a Hail Mary I caught a fish. You believe that? It's true, that's the secret. You wanna try it when we go out on the lake?"

In a way, Michael is acknowledging and honoring this one success by ordering a henchman to off Fredo on the lake while he's fishing.
Maybe I'm cynical, but I see Fredo as comic tragic, as if he were Don Knotts cast in Waiting for Godot.  On those days when I feel like I'm the last link in the chain of life, recalling and quoting Fredo lines somehow cheers me up.  Then, I announce to the world "I'm smart!"

Speaking of Cheering Up ...

Below is a photo of Al Franken's first accuser in the emerging sex harassment scandal at a USO show overseas.

Oh sorry, my bad:

All-American cheerleader empowerment! Note background image of Al checking out the pom-poms.


On that note, I am all blogged out.  I'm on my way to the doctor for a brain scan before I retreat to my blanket fort for the holidays.  Later!