Democrats Gone Wild

If you have children now or plan to in the future, drop what you're doing and get to your local bookstore as soon as possible. Bring a big basket and buy as many of the titles in the "Classics" section before they disappear from the shelves faster than you can say "black lives matter." The lunatics on the left are busy as can be these days, doing their dastardly work in high schools and libraries across the US. 

To Kill a Mockingbird, the award-winning 1960 novel by Harper Lee (chosen in 2018 by a PBS survey as America's Favorite Book) is now being blocked from school reading lists because it portrays the protagonist Atticus Finch as "a white savior." All I can say about that is "Hahahaha and tee-hee." Equally funny is the canceling of Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter for the sin of "slut-shaming." As if being a slut is a good thing. As for Atticus, if I were a poor black man accused of raping a white woman in a town full of racists I would welcome the help of a good lawyer, be he white or black but especially white. 

Book burning has come to America. The modern day Puritans --they're called Democrats now -- have already taken down Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer, and in fact anything ever written by Mark Twain. John Steinbeck is a no-no, as is the entire Harry Potter series. And forget Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind, just forget it entirely.

God help us if those two Democratic senators in Georgia win their run-off elections next week. Then surely we are all doomed.

Sign Language

I am so sick of those Black Lives Matter lawn signs all over the place! Every time I drive past one I have the urge to plow right into it. They are especially irksome here in Maine where there are so few black people, and it's likely the sign-posters don't know any. When will those signs go away? Do we have to see them forever, or will they disappear with the pandemic when we stop being so afraid of death?

Then, here in Maine, there are those big red heart signs, usually seen on the same lawns, although many of the heart-sign people don't single out black lives; they just love all people, one must conclude, and that surely includes black people. For just 21 bucks you can buy one online and tell the world how loving you are.

Best or maybe worst of all are the signs that proclaim, "Hate Has No Home Here." Like hate resides in all the other houses in the neighborhood that don't have those signs? Then there are the ones that cover everything -- it's like a whole paragraph and you could have a car accident slowing down trying to read them -- something about Love and Black Lives Matter and Immigrants, and more. I want nothing to do with those people.

What we need is a sign that says, "Take the Time to Find Out Who I Am." I may have one of those made and put it out front. 

Some Black Lives Matter Less

A teenage girl in Florida had her life canceled when a four-year-old tweet of her saying "nigga" went viral, thanks to the evil doings of one of her classmates, Jimmy Galligan, a mixed-race boy of the same age. The poor girl was only trying to be "cool" since she had heard the word used constantly in rap music by superstars like Cardi B. She had just gotten her learner's permit and said it as an an exclamation, not aimed at any one person. (She was not calling anyone a "nigger.")

Jimmy says he's "not sorry."

Next thing you know, her college acceptance was rescinded and a huge article in last Sunday's New York Times, starting on page 1 and taking up a full page inside, was devoted to making sure the world knew about it, thereby crushing her youthful dreams like Bill Clinton did to Monica Lewinsky. Here's an excerpt:

"Galligan had sat on the video for a long time, waiting for the moment it would do the most damage. After the girl—a cheerleader named Mimi Groves—was accepted to the University of Tennessee, the time had come.

The video depicted Groves, who was 15 at the time, and had just obtained her learner's permit, saying "I can drive, [slur]." The remark was not directed at anyone in particular. The brief video clip featuring it circulated on Snapchat until it was obtained and saved by Galligan, who had grown furious at how often he heard his white classmates using the N-word." 

I wonder if that boy ever heard the following lovely song by Cardi B:

Woo, yeah

Bitches be pressed (woo)
Bitches be pressed (pressed)
Woo, yeah, yeah, woo

Bitches be pressed (pressed)
They know how I'm comin', real bitch in the flesh (woo)
Who the fuck she gon' check? (Who?)
She be talkin' that shit, talkin' out of her neck (brr)
Put blood on her dress (woo)
Bitches be mad when they see Cardi step in the spot (whoa)
Said that you 'bout it, we know that you not
I'ma pull up on bitches as soon as I drop
Bought a new foreign, I might cop a yacht (skrrt)
Bitches in my business, they tryna plot (woo)
Hoes poppin' shit like they hot but they not (no)
Just flooded the wrist, the Patek, the watch (whoa)
Niggas be flexin', we know what you got
Cardi done had got the game in a knot
Fuckin' your nigga, I got him on lock
This go bang…

2021 Could Be Even Worse

The slutty-looking woman dressed like a common street walker shown above on the cover of Vogue magazine is disturbing enough, with her messy hair, naked breasts peeking through a smattering of sequins and sheer lace, and fingernails that could puncture your jugular when she gets pissed off, which she looks like she already is, but even worse is the magazine's cover line in all caps: VOGUE VALUES 2021, NEW YEAR, NEW WORLD. In smaller type we learn that this cover model (for want of a more accurate printable term) is "Dressing for the Future in Fashion That Matters." So I'm guessing that date rape will be making a comeback in 2021.

This is the very same magazine that has refused, for the last four years, to print a photograph of our First Lady, the beautiful, gracious, elegant and extremely photogenic Melania Trump, because she is a Republican. Yet they green-lighted this cover, perfect for teenage boys to jerk off to in the bathroom.

I wonder: just what are Vogue's values for the coming year? And exactly how new will the new world be? Is this how we can expect Jill Biden, or rather Doctor Biden, to dress? Only Editor-in-Chief Anna Wintour, who apparently slept through the women's movement and never met a feminist she couldn't demean, knows for sure.

 

Busy Bees Still Die

My husband is already worried about what he will do after he retires, like that'll ever happen. (I'm pretty sure he will work til his dying day.) I recently overheard him say on a Zoom call with a coworker, "After all, we've got to stay busy, right?" Stay busy until the day you die, and then it's over? That's one approach. 

I have a different one. Being an artist, doing nothing is easy for me. I try to do nothing as much as possible so I can actually notice my life while it's happening. Another benefit of doing nothing is that when I finally do die, there won't be much that I'll miss. It won't be such a Big Deal. It will be, as Seinfeld's Elaine described Jerry's eventual slide into senility, "a pretty smooth transition" for me.

My advice is to do as little as possible while still generating enough income for food and other basic necessities. I guess you could call it my philosophy: "If you take the zing out of Life, you take the sting out of Death."

Only half-kidding.

All the Words You Dare Not Say

It's crazy these days how the English language is being crippled by political correctness. Really, it's sort of retarded. Everyone knows the obvious ones, like the N-word, which means nigger, but every day more are added to the list of no-nos. Like now you can't say "picnic" because it has some sort of convoluted racist meaning. Same for the words slave, master, grandfathered, blacklist, and brown bag, as in a "brown bag lunch." These rules are made for us by the Words Matter Task Force at the University of Michigan. Thank God someone is on it! 

You can't say dummy. You can't say low-hanging fruit because it makes black people think of lynchings. The helpful folks on the task force suggest options, like saying "weakened" instead of "crippled" and "unthinkable" instead of "crazy."  So, in the giving spirit of the season and as a Jew, I offer the following list of words upsetting to my people that may trigger anxiety, and where possible offer inoffensive replacements:

camp (place in the woods)

camping (hanging out in the woods)

campsite (home in the woods)

concentration (think hard)

concentration camp (college)

Aryan race (murderers)

blueberry bagel (sesame bagel)

cinnamon raisin bagel (poppyseed bagel)

the game Yahtzee (Scrabble)

German chocolate cake (chocolate babka)

German measles (plain measles)

Germany (France)

holocaust (big mess)

hologram (sounds too much like holocaust)

ghetto (neighborhood)

trains (cars, planes, boats, buses)

showers (baths)

gas chambers (there is no substitute)

chamber music (rock, pop, soul, jazz, country, classical)

Volkswagen (Jaguar)

Weiner schnitzel (make something else)

finals (exams)

final solution (one way to do it)

furious (brings to mind Fuhrer, say angry)

hometown (brings up Hymietown)

"aw, shit" (sounds like Auschwitz, say "oh, crap")

RIP Leslie West, Mountain Man

The band, with Leslie in the middle

Leslie West, the larger-than-life creator of the rock band Mountain who rose to super-stardom in the 1960s and 70s, died yesterday at the age of 75. More to the point for me, he was just eight months older than I. (Older than me sounds better. That's correct grammar for you: if it sounds wrong it's right.)

I loved Leslie West (nee Weinstein, who knew?). Actually I loved his music, ever since I saw him perform live at the Woodstock festival, and then at smaller venues like New York's Fillmore East. Best known for the song "Mississippi Queen," still heard today as background music in commercials and on oldies radio stations, his guitar playing and singing captured the mood of his young fans perfectly, especially with a little pot to heighten the experience. He was fun onstage too, with a joking personality.

So I was saddened to read his obituary and learn of his on-again, off-again troubles with drug addiction. And weighing almost 300 pounds did not serve him well: he contracted diabetes and had his lower leg amputated when he was 66, a fact I never knew. His death was also a result of his weight, dying of cardiac arrest in his sleep.

As Queen would say,"Another one bites the dust." Never to be replaced.

 

Film Review: THE PROM

You know those movies that are so bad they're good?  The Prom is not one of those. We thought it was one of those in the beginning, but it turned out to be just so bad. For starters, it's a musical with people bursting into song whenever the scriptwriter drew a blank. Sadly, the songs all sound exactly alike, sort of like on a Jackson Browne album except Jackson's voice is like honey being poured into your ears and this is more like not that.

Meryl Streep stars, and as always is worth watching. Here she hams it up as a narcissistic Broadway star in a red wig and with a dazzling, over-the-top wardrobe, so the clothes are fun. Nicole Kidman plays a tarty chorus girl who looks like she might have anorexia. She's awfully skinny and shows a lot of it in skimpy costumes. The rest of the cast is okay, but just okay. Except for the head gay guy Barry, who is a train wreck. Played by James Corden, a straight actor who tries to act gay, he does this by flouncing around and using his hands a lot. I am not even gay and I was insulted. 

But the true star of the film is the LGBTQ community. Gays are coming out all over and isn't that heartwarming? They are supporting the protagonist, a high-school lesbian who wants to attend the prom with her girlfriend but the school board says no way. This makes the news and the Broadway gang, laid low after their new show receives dismal reviews and closes on opening night, hops a bus to Indiana to show their support for homosexuals everywhere and hopefully earn some good publicity.

There's tons of singing and dancing and schmaltz. We couldn't stop watching, our mouths agape for the whole two hours. It was directed by the guy who made the Glee TV show, so if you liked that you will love this, especially if you are about 12 or 13 years old.

Covid Christmas Letter

Dear Friends and Loyal Readers:

I would be remiss to not write my annual Christmas letter simply because we are experiencing a global pandemic. Today I got one of those from a friend who in past years shared details about her international travels but this year took several paragraphs to recount what shows she and her husband have been watching on Netflix. That and all their surgeries.

Speaking of Netflix, we recently installed a huge new "smart" TV in our living room just to make it official that we are never going out to the movies ever again. We're considering building a concession stand where the fireplace is and stocking it with Raisinets, Sno-Caps and Twizzlers, and maybe going the extra mile and getting a popcorn machine. You know, for the aroma.

While this isn't exactly news, I will say that I have several face masks I like to wear. I'm no Nancy Pelosi but I do have a few besides the standard blue paper kind you see everywhere. My favorite is a pink and white striped cotton one made by my dear friend, Jay. It fits great and doesn't cause my glasses to fog up. Another one is navy with white stars that I got at Ace Hardware for $6.oo. That's a lot to spend on a face mask but it's washable and likely will last the entire pandemic, unless that vaccine doesn't work and then all bets are off.

Naturally we have not gone anywhere outside of Maine, so there's nothing to report in the travel department. We did watch a great documentary about America's national parks the other night, and it reminded us of so many places we visited when life was actually fun. There was Bryce Canyon and Yellowstone and Arches and Zion and the Grand Tetons. Those were the days, weren't they?

If the virus had not arrived I could tell you about our two-week trip to Israel last April with our dear friends Teresa and Jim, but of course it did so I can't. On the other hand we've had some fun Zoom dates with friends in D.C., New York and Charlottesville, so it's not like we haven't thought about other places.

Mitch finally got his dental implants and I finally got done wearing Invisalign braces, so that's something.

My new favorite drink is a White Russian, but with only half a shot of vodka, otherwise I get too drunk. I have one almost every evening before dinner and I find although it's delicious, it hasn't helped much in the depression department. All I can say is "Thank God for Lorazepam!" 

We put up Christmas lights on a few trees in our yard since it gets dark at 4 pm here in Maine. What with the frigid temperatures and the snow and ice, things can get bleak.

Merry Christmas!

Sometimes Racism is Allowed

If we notice and then mention that the robber of a local convenience store was a black man, we are racist. If we ask our son or daughter if their new love interest is white or black, male or female, we are racist and sexist. We are not supposed to notice. We are supposed to pay no attention to skin color, gender choice or ethnic background. Such trivia doesn't matter to non-racists.

Yet incoming president Joe Biden, following orders from above, chose as VP a woman with little else in her history to merit becoming the leader of the free world if and when Biden develops that "mysterious disease" he said he would develop if it becomes necessary for him to resign, because of skin color and gender. He chose a black man to run the EPA and a female Native American to be the Interior Secretary. People who get excited about such things are excited about that since she will be the first Native American cabinet secretary ever. 

Mr. Biden has praised his cabinet as one of "firsts," with nine of his nominees poised to break barriers if they are confirmed by the Senate. "We'll have more people of color than any cabinet ever. We'll have more women than any cabinet ever. We'll have a cabinet of barrier-breakers. A Cabinet of firsts," he said. No word on how qualified any of them are, but hey, who cares? 

Still to come are the morbidly obese, the Little People, Latinos, the disabled, Muslims and those with mental illness. Can't wait to see who fills those slots.

Bye Bye Dems

Certainly with a few exceptions, like my son and my very closest friends who know who they are, I'm done with Democrats. Their blanket refusal to admit that this election was fraudulent is just plain idiocy. Whoever it is you want to be president, and it likely is neither Trump nor Biden, you at least want to feel that your vote is properly counted. And obviously this is no longer true in America.

Those people who jumped on the Biden Bandwagon, even after so many years of Biden being seen as a perennial loser noted for his frequent plagiarism, getting hair plugs, politicizing his dead wife and children for sympathy, sticking his foot in his mouth and now knee-deep in dirty deals with his son Hunter in the driver's seat, those Democrats who buy the party line no matter what, like saying Bill Clinton's sex life is his own business, have lost all credibility with me. I can't befriend someone with no mind of their own. What's the point?