Mental Illness in Hollywood

An actress named Julia Fox, who I have never seen perform and so have no idea if she has talent, is desperate for attention so I guess she doesn't. As is evident in the photo at right of Ms. Fox in Park City, Utah during the Sundance Film Festival, she believes that her real talents lie in her body.

Sad but true, many of Hollywood's superstars and wannabes are sick in the head. And if they aren't sick in the head they're on drugs. And if they aren't on drugs they're alcoholics. But here's the worst part: regular people worship them from afar, emulate them and think they are better than the rest of us.

If you do not walk around wearing a string bikini over your clothes in frigid weather in order to highlight your erogenous zones, lest someone forget you have breasts and a vagina, consider yourself lucky that you have all your marbles and stop envying the crazy loons you see on screen. They have much bigger problems than you, despite that mansion in the Hollywood hills with the big swimming pool and the eight bathrooms and the private tennis court. 

Give me a functioning brain any day.

  

The Circus Is Coming

How to elect a president....

Today I spoke with a woman at a local political event who was 100% positive that Joe Biden would not be the Democratic candidate in 2024, and instead would be replaced by Michelle Obama. She said she read about it somewhere or heard it on a podcast, something along those lines. However she came by the information, she had no doubt it was true. 

Naturally, she was horrified. Me too. If that happens, there won't be enough drugs or alcohol to quell my paranoia, loathing and overwhelming disheartenment. 

On a more positive note, the same woman added that there is talk of Michelle coming out as a man in order to win votes from transgenders (and all those other alphabet letters). Now that would be fun to see!

Get ready. The circus is coming.

What to Do With the Body

I am old enough to think about my funeral arrangements. Of course, everyone at any age is old enough for that, but the popular misconception still exists that only old people die. (I did not delude my three-year-old son from thinking that and instead told him the truth, as gently as possible and adding that actually most people die when they are old, but he still hasn't forgiven me 33 years later. Oh well.)

Anyway, I don't want to be buried in the ground, that seems really bizarre to me. I am not a tree or a bush or a plant of any kind. Worse than the burial is a service of some sort where people who knew me gather to allegedly mourn my death, while eating lots of yummy catered food and drinking freely from an open bar. (My husband is very generous and I'm assuming I'll go first since he is younger.)

The problem is that so few people who "know" me are still alive, so they won't be in attendance, and those who come will likely do so only for the free food. Anyone who truly cared for me would be AWOL, home in bed crying their eyes out. (I hope.)

This is a maudlin topic but it came up because my husband is about to fly to a distant city to attend the funeral of a former co-worker I never heard him speak of. He says he's going for "the children," as if the bigger the number of funeral attendees the better they will all feel about their dead daddy. I say he's going for the party where he will see many of his colleagues who are still alive. What fun!

Then there's the speechifying about what a great person the deceased was, how their smile lit up the room, how much they loved life, they lived life to the fullest, and they were taken too young no matter how old there were. 

What I would like is for a couple of angels to show up and transport me to the Heavenly Father. Short of that cremation will do; it's clean and neat and a fitting nod to all those Jews incinerated in Europe. Whatever, just don't let them put me in the ground, Brian! (He knows who he is.) 

Trump Was Right

CNN reporters Jake Tapper and Dana Bash

Oh dear -- the level of misinformation, disinformation and just plain idiocy that is the very basis of the Democratic Party is almost as scary as the thought of another term of President Biden gradually morphing into President Kamala Harris.

This morning I received the following comment in response to my "liking" another person's comment online: "obviously you have drunken the bleach like president trump told you too."

Besides her pathetic grammatical errors, the woman was dead wrong. Like many of her kind, sheeplike followers of CNN, she stupidly believed that President Trump once told people to drink bleach to treat Covid. 

He never said anything of the kind, but that didn't prevent so-called reporters Anderson Cooper, Jake Tapper and Dana Bash from saying he did. The following clarification is from Newsweek fact-checkers:

 "Trump did speculatively raise the question of medical experts researching disinfectants as a possible COVID treatment. And though he initially touted an 'injection inside or a cleaning,' he clarified in the same press conference that any treatment he was speculating on would not be through injections. Despite Trump's dubious, conjectural and inarticulate comments, he did not directly suggest that people inject themselves with disinfectant."

The worst part of the first Trump administration was the lies spread about him by the liberal press, causing him to call them "the enemy of the people." Let's hope they do better in his next term.

Taking Care of Mom and Dad, Palestinian-Style

Every cloud has a silver lining in Gaza. 

As our parents age, naturally we worry about how to care for them should they become infirm or unable to generate an income. Just yesterday my own son voiced shock and concern after learning that a month in an assisted-living facility runs to about $20,000. "Who can afford that," he asked. (I assured him I would sooner walk into the ocean like Norman Maine in the original A Star Is Born than waste his inheritance.)

Dealing with aging parents may be tough here in America, but for enterprising Palestinians it's no big deal. All a healthy young man has to do is die while engaged in killing an Israeli, or die trying, and Mom and Dad are set for life. According to a piece in today's Wall Street Journal, the Palestinian Authority "pays a one-time lump sum plus a monthly stipend for life to the families of any 'martyr' killed attacking Israel or in a confrontation with Israel." 

So for a Palestinian parent, the death of a child is much less traumatizing than it is in the U.S. In fact, it's a good thing! Not only will the dead offspring be rewarded with 72 virgins in Heaven, but Mom and Dad can stop worrying about paying the rent and enjoy their golden years. 

A Day to Celebrate Jews in America!

Today most working Americans will have the day off in order to celebrate a very important holiday that gets right to the heart of our national desire for diversity, equity and inclusion: It's National Bagel Day! (So far no word on whether Dr. Martin Luther King liked bagels.)

The great thing about bagels is that you can eat them regardless of your religion and skin color, even though they are clearly a food that originated in the Jewish communities of Poland. 

So before you grab your hastily-scrawled sign saying "Jews should all die" and dash off to the nearest anti-Israeli protest, consider your morning bagel, so yummy be it plain, sesame, poppy seed, the popular "everything," or one of those goyishe blueberry, raisin or cranberry concoctions (which are a shonda if you ask me), and thank the first Jew you meet. 

Anyway, Happy Bagel Day to all! 

Film Review: THE HOLDOVERS

Dominic Tessa as Angus, being miserable.

One of those sappy-but-instructive tales about how the connection between two lost souls can improve both lives, director Alex Payne's The Holdovers has one major thing going for it: A brand new star in the Hollywood sky is unveiled. Dominic Tessa, 21 years old, steals every scene, even from Paul Giamatti, a seasoned pro whose performance is at the top of his impressive game here. I was reminded of the world's reaction to then-unknown Dustin Hoffman's debut in The Graduate, after which he was everywhere all at once. This kid is that good, exposing an emotional depth far beyond his years.

The film's title refers to students with nowhere else to go who are stuck at a New England prep school over the two-week Christmas break. It's 1971, with the music, hairstyles, cars and technology of the era adding to the fun. Set in winter, there are lots of pretty snow scenes of the campus and the surrounding areas. With everyone else gone a chaperone is needed, and history professor Paul Dunham  (Giamatti) draws the short straw. He's a bitter, lonely and crotchety man straight out of a Dickens novel who has no time for niceties with his miserable charges. One of them is Angus Tully (Cessna), whose heartless mother has dumped him from a planned trip to St. Kitt's to instead go alone with her new husband. 

Angus is distraught, depressed and near-suicidal over the fact that he's locked in with this sorry group of losers, especially since he despises Professor Dunham. Ultimately their relationship is the crux of the film, and as expected they end up all warm and fuzzy with one another, although it's a long and bumpy road getting there. Along the way they are propped up, cajoled and counseled by the school's resident cook (Da'Vine Joy Randolph), a loving and wise woman who is mourning the loss of her only son recently killed in Vietnam. The fact that she is black and hugely obese will delight fans of diversity, equity and inclusion, although honestly I found her size distracting.

Still showing in theaters, The Holdovers is currently rentable on Peacock only, but you can pay $20 to see it on other streaming services until January 26 when it will be rentable for $3.99. If you're looking for a pleasant way to pass some time right now, it's definitely worth the 20 bucks.

I Identify as Outta Here

It's official: I no longer relate to the world. I have never heard a Taylor Swift song. I don't like football so have no idea who her boyfriend is, although I know his last name is Kelce. Yesterday I read in the news that their relationship is "all anyone can talk about." Except for me, I guess, although that was not mentioned in the article.

I regard politics as a pathetic circus that attracts and employs losers, egomaniacs, narcissists, liars, sex fiends and fools who are interested only in their own self-advancement, self-aggrandizement and enrichment gained from speeches and books written for them by other people nobody ever heard of.

Additionally, petty criminals, especially those who are not white, can easily steal up to $950 worth of merchandise in broad daylight and in front of witnesses and not be punished. At the same time, illegal immigrants, many of whom are miscreants in their native land, are given free food, free health care and free housing by the above-mentioned politicians while poor Americans who were born and raised here go without.

The most obvious evidence of mental illness in our species is war. People disagree about how to live or if there is a God or what God looks like or who owns a particular piece of land, and instead of discussing their differences they pick up weapons and hurl them, shoot them or drop them on the people with whom they disagree. Then when they get hurt themselves they return home crying and say look I have no legs anymore, I have no arms anymore, I can't work, won't you pay off my mortgage? Not I, since they went willingly, ready to kill complete strangers wearing a different uniform. What did they think -- that they would return unscathed? So now every paraplegic, quadriplegic or burned-off-face-person wants a handout, and in return for supporting their sickening behavior we'll get a free blanket imprinted with a picture of a guy in a wheelchair.

Outside of our species, the natural world is full of beauty, with birds and flowers and waterfalls and kittens and puppies and chipmunks and flamingos and peacocks and palm trees and little tiny frogs no bigger than your thumbnail. That's what I relate to. In fact, my new pronouns are chirp, ribbit and meow. Please don't bother me, I'm napping. (Unless you have some treats. )

Reality Sucks

Some days it's hard to keep going. Those are days when the wall I have built between my brain and reality thins out or even retracts completely, allowing the awful truth of the world to seep inside. Today is one of those days. 

For some reason I opted to read The Times of Israel website. Big mistake. There's a long story called "Those We Have Lost." That headline should have tipped me off and sent me scurrying back to the inanity of who wore what to the Golden Globes awards last night, but instead I soldiered on and read details about some of the people killed by Hamas last October 7, just because of their religion, or ethnicity, or whatever the heck being a Jew is. Mostly young people on the cusp of adulthood (see photo) who had gone to a music festival to have a good time, each one left behind a family to tell the world who they had been. 

My resulting feelings of grief and loss sitting in my kitchen in Maine, powerless to do anything about the situation, are pointless. My husband's advice is "don't read that stuff." As is often the case, he's right. Horrors taking place many thousands of miles from me that are far out of my control help me understand why so many people are into trivia about Taylor Swift and her football boyfriend. 

There's no punchline.

Subtle Signs of White Supremacy

You don't have to walk around carrying a torch or wearing a white sheet or waving a Confederate flag to be a white supremacist. There are so many subtle ways this dreadful condition takes hold, almost unbeknownst to the guilty party. For instance, I just heard today that punctuality is a concept of white supremacy. If so then I am guilty as hell since I can't be late even if I try. (I now also understand the whole C.P.T. thing.)

But now I'm wondering that if a simple thing like punctuality indicates white supremacy, what other things do that I don't know. How about neatness? Guilty. Showering daily? Guilty. I already heard that math is racist and luckily I'm off the hook there, although I can add, subtract and multiply. And perfectionism is apparently a very big indicator, but I don't suffer from that so maybe I'm not all white.

Who knows what's next? To be safe, if you're a white person just keep your head down and try not to articulate too much if you know what's good for you. Oh yeah, and stop knowing what's good for you.

Claudine Gay Was Targeted

Claudine Gay, the black Harvard University president who ultimately resigned after much unpleasantness is now claiming that she was targeted, never mind the Jews, because of her race. Of course she is 100% correct, that's how she got her job! Just like how Kamala Harris and other underqualified people of color obtain high-level positions.

Targeting people for their skin color is very popular these days. Maybe if I have my skin darkened I can finally get hired at LLBean.