Wasted Time, Wasted Money, Wasted Life

My husband has an identical twin brother who has three children. Through marriage, they are my niece and nephews. Starting when the oldest, now 37, was just a baby, I was a doting aunt. Then two more came along, and I was even more doting, meaning that at Christmas, birthdays and Easter I would shower the kids with love and affection, and of course gifts.

Since I have only one child -- a son-- and we are Jewish, Christmas shopping for my only nephews and niece, who despite their Jewish father were raised Catholic by their mother, was a blast. Money was no object. I started in October and spent countless hours wrapping their gifts, then shipping them off to Maine from my home in Washington, DC. Eventually we moved here and I could present their gifts in person. It was fun for me and for them. 

But it wasn't just gifts. They loved my cooking, especially my apple pie. I drove one of them to horseback riding lessons every week. I gave wise counsel when asked. I cared about them.

Fast-forward to today. I honestly cannot remember the last time I laid eyes on any of them, or spoke with them on the phone. Fifteen years, maybe? No texts, no emails, nothing. They all live far away but even when I hear that they are in town for a visit, none of them get in touch. Are they married? Are they happy? Did the girl transition or is she just a pronoun-touting lesbian who works in construction? I have no idea, as I no longer communicate with their mother and their father barely mentions them.

If I could live my life over again, I wouldn't do any of that.

Some Days Are Better Than Others

Okay, so I wrote a rather depressing post earlier today about missing beloved dead people. I got over that when my son called and I realized that he is my favorite person and he is alive and talking to him always cheers me up. So much so that I often listen to our past phone conversations on his podcast called "Zack's Mom". (Find it on Spotify.)  

Moods come and go, often for no reason we can identify. Hormones? Bad dreams? Lack of sleep? Or that old devil, dehydration? Who knows? Certainly not that shrink you tell your troubles to, usually at a very high price. The fact is, some days are better than others. Our job is to get through the bad ones somehow. If you're having one of those today, remind yourself:

1. You woke up this morning.

2. You are not in the hospital recovering from surgery. (Skip this one if you are.)

3. You do not have an upcoming surgery scheduled. (Skip this one if you do.)

4. You are not homeless, have food in the fridge and indoor plumbing.

Then go take a hot shower and clean something: Your garage, the refrigerator, a closet, whatever. It's very therapeutic. Soon enough it will be tomorrow, which for all you know will be one of the good ones!

Calling All Dead People

By the time you reach my age, you like more dead people than living people. These days, when I'm down in the dumps and need someone to talk to, the people who could cheer me up the most are not available -- at least not without a Ouija board. This sucks and is one of the worst parts of life.

Let's Get Real About AI

Business bigwigs and government leaders talk up "AI" like it's a fabulous invention that will revolutionize mankind and improve life for everyone. But what if, instead of saying the initials, people said what they actually stand for? Just how great is artificial intelligence? Let's see. 

Synonyms for artificial: unreal, contrived, hokey, stilted 

Similar to artificial: affected, arranged, dummy, ersatz, factitious, fake, false, faux, imitation, simulated, staged, substitute, synthetic, unnatural 

Related to artificial: unreal, counterfeit, imitative

Call me old-fashioned, but I still prefer reality. While it's currently all the rage, in the long run, "AI" might not benefit society even a little.

Puzzle-Mania

Today's puzzle, in case you need help.....

Just in case you don't believe that people are getting dumber, grok this: Every week on page three of the Sunday New York Times, there is a column called "Wordplay: Tips for Today's Crossword." The explanation for this is that, "A Times Games columnist helps readers solve the day's crossword."

I started doing the Sunday crossword in the Times magazine section when I was about 12 or 13, with my mother. I never stopped, and today I do it with my husband as we have for our entire marriage, going on 40 years. Not once have we needed help to complete it. But never mind getting help --  the column I mentioned gives the answers, right there in print! Not all of them, but many. 

Now you tell me what that says about the level of intelligence of the typical New York Times reader, not to mention their editors.

When Your Neighbors Are Democrats

I live on a beautiful street in a small town 20 miles from Portland, Maine. Except for one other family besides ours, it's populated by Democrats. It's a dead-end street, so if you enter by mistake you will have to turn around when you understand that fact. Although the house at the end of the street has a long driveway where you could do such a thing, the meanies who live there have posted a sign that says "No Turn-Arounds."

Mrs. Meanie walks her dog, off leash, every day past our house. Often, her giant out-of-control Yellow Labrador tramples through my gardens and pees somewhere on our front lawn. I say nothing, because dogs will be dogs. Besides, neighbors are people we must live with, peacefully one hopes. Yet Mrs. Meanie doesn't share that feeling. 

The other day she started SCREAMING at Mitch for supposedly driving too fast, even though he wasn't. Waving her arms wildly, she shouted, "Slow down!!!!!" with obvious hostility. (Meanwhile her dog was peeing on another manicured lawn.)

Our next door neighbors haven't spoken to us in the 14 years they have lived here. Several others who we were once close with shut us out a few years ago when we put a Susan Collins sign on our lawn, realizing possibly for the first time that we vote Republican. One particularly virulent Democrat whose vast gardens I watered daily for two weeks when she vacationed one hot summer, actually marched over to my house to say, "I don't like the way you think."

Here's the funny part: At the entrance to our street there are two lawns signs. One says, "Love Is All Around," and directly across the street from that, the other says, "Be Nice."

Welcome to Strawberry Fields

Back in the days when I wrote features for the Washington Post, my editor was a relentless task-master.  The opening paragraph had to identify the old standbys: who, what, where, when and why. The byline consisted of one name only: mine. And I had to identify everyone I quoted by name and connection to the story.

But that was then, before the dummies took over. In today's Wall Street Journal, the bylines of four of the five front page stories carry either three or four names. WTF? What the heck are they all doing -- looking up words in a thesaurus? And many of the quotes are attributed to "people with knowledge of the situation" and "someone in the room at the time."

John Lennon foresaw this murky future years ago in his song, "Strawberry Fields Forever": 

"Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see.

It's getting hard to be someone, but it all works out

Nothing is real, and nothing to get hung about."

Stuff People Are Interested In

 

Photos of Hollywood starlets in revealing clothing

Meghan Markel and how much her life sucks because of the Royal Family

Different ways President Trump is an asshole

How Jew-hatred is growing globally

Anne Hathaway's exposed pregnant belly (see photo)

The rise of socialism in America

Kate Middleton's latest outfits, hairstyles and children

Old women like Martha Stewart trying to look young and stay relevant

Parents who murdered their children

Husbands who murdered their wives

Celebrities walking around New York City

The latest weight-loss craze

Violent Black crimes on the rise

Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce's marriage

Transgenders in sports

New Netflix series

The war in Iran 

 

Here's One True Thing

The Real Maine starts 20 miles north of the city of Portland.

Back in the 1990s -- basically the last century -- my weekly humor column ran in the Deseret News, a noteworthy Salt Lake City daily. I never had any trouble coming up with what to write about, as humor was different back then. If it was slapstick funny and made you laugh, or if it was satirical and made you think, it was fine with my editors. Those days are long gone. There are no more humor columns in newspapers because much of what was considered funny in the past is now labeled insensitive or hurtful to somebody, somewhere.

Consequently, my sense of has humor died through disuse. So this blog, started in 2007 with the aim of being funny, has morphed into something else. Call it musings on society, which more often come in the form of complaints about the downward slide of intelligence among my species. While it may be true, it's not very amusing.

Comics like Jerry Seinfeld rake in big money talking about silly, inconsequential quirks of mankind, while edgier comics like Anthony Jeselnik push the envelope way past the edge and have fewer followers and less name recognition. Meanwhile, fallen stars like Louis C.K. attempt a comeback with questionable material that even I, once a big fan of his, find objectionable. (Rape and jerking off are not funny.)

My current hero and go-to when I am down is Mike Berbiglia. His four Netflix specials continue to crack me up and feel better about life no matter how many times I've seen them. His subject matter is his own life, told in story form with absolutely no holding back on the gruesome details. I applaud him but I cannot be like him. The events of my painful childhood might make others laugh, and have, but I no longer feel like sharing anything personal for fear of inviting the vicious slings and arrows that lurk on the Internet. 

So this blog has no raison d'être other than my love of writing. With the hope of bringing a nugget of worthwhile information to any stray reader, I suggest that the city of Portland is no longer worth a visit if you come to Maine. I was there recently and was appalled by the number of zoned-out druggies asleep on street corners, on bus stop benches and in doorways. Homeless encampments, needles littering the gutters and empty storefronts add to the city's bleak feeling. If you come to Maine on vacation, bypass Portland and make your first stop L.L. Bean's in Freeport. It'll give you what you're looking for.

Film Review: DANNY COLLINS

Danny, giving his fans what they came for. 

Finding something on Netflix that isn't a frothy rom-com, a grisly horror movie, a documentary about a heinous murder or something starring Jennifer Lopez is a daunting task. Last night I almost gave up but then stumbled on Danny Collins, a star-studded movie released in 2015 that sounded interesting. Turned out it was. Starring Al Pacino, Bobby Cannavale, Anette Bening, Jennifer Garner and Christopher Plummer, and directed by Dan Fogelman (This Is Us, Only Murders In the Building), it's a funny/sad/quirky comedy/drama that almost defies description, but I'll try.

Pacino plays Danny, a fading superstar who's still raking in the dough from sold-out concerts filled with aging fans, married to a girl one-third his age who cheats on him with the pool boy, and hates his life. Sick of filling his empty soul with booze and drugs, Danny has an epiphany when he learns that a letter from Beatle John Lennon written to him eons ago, inviting him to get in touch, never reached him. Stunned, Danny realizes how different things might have been if he had gotten it! 

Deciding it's not too late to start over and do good, he tracks down the adult son (Bobby Cannavale) he fathered with a one-night stand 35 years ago and never met. As one might expect, Danny's flashy arrival at his son's middle-class New Jersey suburb is not met with open arms. But soon enough Fate steps in and makes all things possible.

Pacino's over-the-top performance as a buffoonish, drug-fueled lounge-lizard is as far from The Godfather's Michael Corleone as one could get, making it clear that he is one of our greatest actors of all time. Transformed by love and an adorable granddaughter, Danny's
good heart comes to the surface. By the last scene, I needed tissues.

Mean People

Two days ago I fell asleep at the wheel of my car and crashed into a mailbox. I lived and my brand new car sustained damages in the thousands. The mailbox died and had to be replaced. To that end, I gave the owner of the mailbox my name, address and phone number which I watched her enter into her cell phone, and promised to replace it.

The next day my husband spent five hours doing so, first going to the crime scene to assess the situation, then going to the Home Depot half an hour's drive away where he spent $100 on a new mailbox and post, and stick-on numbers for the box. He then returned to the crime scene and, using his post-hole digger, installed the new mailbox, making sure it was to local code. The outside temperature was 87 degrees that day.

I could have left -- my car still drove -- without giving the lady my name or phone number, leaving her broken mailbox on the ground. After all, I was incredibly traumatized and confused by the whole incident and was anxious to get home, crawl into bed and weep hysterically. But I didn't. 

Have we gotten a thank you call or text from either her or her wife, the two ladies of the house? No. Draw your own conclusions regarding Americans, Mainers or lesbians. I have.