An early serving of cheer.....

 

Being the year it is and things being what they are, we are advancing our annual  holiday decorating festival. Santa is our big star. 

Take a couple of minutes to take a break away from everything else.

Feed the child in you.

             Do you figure he's still making a list and checking it twice. 

Whether this is a time of merriment, or a time for spirit and anticipation, or the cultural tinsel and sparkle, we hope you'll have a few minute to consider what is Joy and shine a few memories. 

See you down the trail.

For they have sown the wind....

 

"For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind: it hath no stalk; the bud shall yield no meal: if so be it yield, the strangers shall swallow it up."  Hosea                                                        

        "And they shall reap the whirlwind." I have no idea how many times this sentence from the 8th-century BC Jewish Tanakh has been used to respond to dire matters or invoke a sense of doom. The Talmud lists Hosea as the greatest prophet of his generation. It seems appropriate on this day after America changed.

        Democracy worked. The people were heard. The people elected a convicted felon and rapist, a career conman and proven fraudster who promises revenge. He was elected to the office in which he was twice impeached. 

        The people elected a liar, proven liar. Oh what seeds we have sown into the wind. 

        The people elected the first man in American history to refuse a peaceful transfer of power. Mourn our proud history. Mourn our trust.

        The people elected a man who promises to deport millions, perhaps even some who voted for him. The people, including black men, elected a convicted racist. 

        The people elected a man who admires Vladimir Putin, who has manipulated and controlled him. 

        The people elected a man that hundreds of military heroes and devoted security and foreign policy experts says is unfit and would be a danger to America.

        All of the federal charges will now go away, not because they were invalid, but because the Supreme Court majority he appointed said he can operate with immunity.

        Pray for the people of Ukraine. Pray for the alliances that have prevented war in Europe since the end of World War II. Pray for the world leaders who feared this outcome. 

        Pray for the climate. Pray for public lands. Pray for clean air and water. Pray for the safety of children.

        Pray for those who elected him, especially those who believe he is anointed by God.

        Pray for America. Pray for the world.

        Democracy worked. The people were heard. What's wrong with us?

       What have we done?

       "And they shall reap a whirlwind..."

Who will we be?

 

            An exhausted America waits. Who are we to be? I've got a hunch. 

        It seems a galaxy away now, but there was a time when I could not wait for the next campaign season. I was young and thought politics was America's greatest spectator sport. We've all changed. 

     Sure, I've gotten older, but the game has gotten rotten. Money will do that. Electoral politics now belongs to the election industry including their bunk mates from  media. Big time media was a sophisticated call girl. Social media is an alleyway, dirty-leg influencer. It's that same little screen in the hand with its random, fractured, non-aggregated, stream of untethered, untested reality that defines information flow and one on one targeted messaging. It's madness, it makes no sense and that's how voters these days are being informed. It's the old folks who watch what's left of broadcast news and it seems intent on only predicting who's going to win. America was greater when there were lines of newspaper boxes on corners.

    It's not just that. The quality of politician today is to public service what a bad virus is to your long planned bucket list trip. 

   There are so few with a sense of honor, integrity or who seek to serve. Most, the vast majority, are on the make. The republican party has become a morality tale of what happens when you let a dominatrix smother your conscience and then make you a whipping boy or girl. They have become a beaten, locked step marching army of nasties being manipulated by a convicted fraudster. They are a mob of big time wrestling style evangelicals who are huffing man-tan and hair spray and who believe Col Flynn is the new Moses. 

    So who's got the game? Who are the real influencers? Who's going to make it count? 

    On this side, people who think. Those who reason. 

    Over there the fantasy land, where lies live and no one has to think. Just be angry, aggrieved, bigoted, or trying to settle a score for the rotten deal. 

    I've thought the key, in battle ground and swing states and from sea to shining sea are women. They have been the most offended, and are the people with the most to lose by what used to be Donald Trump and what is now his unholy carnival freak show. Republicans are dangerous it is true, not only because they are spineless, have grown fond of the whippings, have no integrity, they additionally have no respect for America and not enough sense to understand the role of a world stabilizer. They are a bat shit cult and especially out to make women's lives awful.

    On this side are Americans, who believe in the American way. Even with its faults there is nothing comparable. Rather than revenge, and turning troops on people, and making enemy lists, they want to make it work. 

    How it ever got to this point should keep you all awake at night, until you get blinded by the light.

    I think I'm losing grip on reality. It's like we are living in a dark Marvel studios film where the spoiled little lard grows up to become the king of the evil high rise and continues to build his power until he takes over the government and eventually unleashes armageddon. Oh the man-tan and hair spray holy huffers love that.

    All things pass, but before America dies, I'm counting on that innate wisdom of woman, that special blend of God, life, nurture, and love. 

    Women suffered to even gain a vote in the game. My late mother worked in state government and was active in politics in the 1930's. She knew their time was still coming, but she hung in there.  I'm a husband and father of two daughters and I've always been partial to women because I think they are smarter, more capable and have what the Fins call Sisu. It's a strong will, a perseverance, determination.  I'm thinking this power of women will be the factor, the force that defeats a real piece of chump evil. I think that edge of women, especially mature women, maybe the silver stake.

    Hope and pray I'm right. 

    1964 was the first Presidential campaign I reported. Now I live with ghosts; all those years, all those bus rides, plant gates, conventions, crowded cafes, mayors races, senate and house campaigns, Gubernatorial elections, debates, wheels up and wheels down, morning baggage calls, waiting in cue for satellite feed time, weeks with no sleep, eating on the run, waiting for a pool report, gathering around the press compound in basements, old ballrooms, empty warehouses, clearing security, late nite drinks and debriefs, waiting to see what the AP or the NY Times was leading with, hours of speculation, crunching numbers, deadlines that never ended, door to door interviews,  on air analysis sets, back room experts, victory parties, concessions, inaugurations, and it started over. Those spirits are stored away now with old photos, press passes and badges, and memories of some of the greats I was lucky enough to work around or grab a moment with. 

    We all loved the game. Not so much any more. But I could get excited about President Harris and watching what a woman in charge could do for America. It might even change the game altogether.

    See you down trail.

    

        

The Litany of Saint Francis Coppola

     Francis Ford Coppola’s MEGAOPOLIS raises Film/Cinema to the realm of faith and religion. It screens as a paean to hope. 

In this passion project, the 5 time Oscar winning Coppola has become a homilist, employing the director’s art and scope to leave the world a fable that embeds a vision into popular culture.

Yes it is a “box office flop” however little that means. In the work of an auteur money is crass way of measuring art, or religion. Commercial success is one of those pernicious harpy evils that flutter around in the MEGAOPOLIS.

There is not one moment of tedium in the 2 hours and 18 minutes of epic visuals, sensual and intellectual deluge and deft exploration of human nature.  

After a life of film-making and story-telling, Coppola combines those skills and tricks with such mastery as to leave a work of art that could be confused for a foundational piece of a system of belief. 

MEGAOPOLIS was not designed by Hollywood studios to be a blockbuster. It is Coppola’s personal creation and it comes as a kind marker to the human race. 

This is an extraordinary film, while it is also a 21^st Century code of sorts. It’s my hunch recognition for the film is years away. MEGAOPOLIS will develop a following, and it will be regarded as a kind of sociological and political “holiness,” but it is so loaded and charged, that, at a time when humankind is distracted and less capable of deep thinking, it will be missed by many or not fully understood. It is a rolling codex of human values and an inventory of the functions and abuse by "empire ethos" and control in everything from sexual behavior to corrupt power states. Undermining evidence of something noble is the ubiquitous seductive presence of desire for money.

Rabbi-Father-Reverend Coppola preaches a kind of timeless story, part messiah adventure, part creative obsession (wanting to replicate and improve creation itself), and populates it with all the old runes, riddles, and revolutions of history. Brilliant faux Shakespearean Roman Empire, and a searing lens on modern America, but it’s not a popcorn film. It’s a phantasmagoric intellectual analysis of human social structure and ways. 

In addition to five Academy awards, the old master has six Golden globes and two Palme’s d’Ors. He can wrap a topic nicely that one can just take a helluva ride through a morality tale that fuses the fall of the Rome with the continuum of human abuse, including our present political war in America. There is a lot about how politics and money bed together. There are pieces about mores, morality, media and motherhood that could keep a college professor occupied teaching several semesters. 

The Coppola Gospel is literally imprinted as interstitial headers, done with reverence. The top layer of story arc is a grand sweep. The acting is superb, befitting a holy melodrama directed by a legendary story teller. If one could only take it in as a movie-but this is Coppola; a self -financed, passion poem, and maybe his valedictory.

I told Lana I want to see it a few more times, just to get everything.

In 50 years, film scholars will marvel at it. Philosophers, ethicists, sociologists and folklore scholars may study it as one of the arts best "good vs evil" tale. It is about a fall and way back to the garden. 

Though they are forces that bring the fable to life, the actors seem secondary to Coppola’s sermon. Plenty of masterful work led by Adam Driver, Nathalie Emmanuel. One critic said It well when they wrote that Aubry Plaza goes for broke as the sexual power woman “Wow Platinum.”  Giancarlo Esposito and John Voight are excellent. Laurence Fishburne is a major reason the Coppola litany works. Dustin Hoffman does a nice cameo and there is a family connection with Talia Shire and nephew Jason Schwartzman.  

Have a look at it, but expect something more than just a movie. When one of the most influential film makers, spends as much as he did, to tell a story crafted over 40 years, we should pay attention.

  

        See you down the trail

The Prosecutor and the Lunatic.....

 

           In a reality not far away about 60 Million US television viewers saw Kamala Harris and Donald Trump show their stuff.

        If it wasn't earnestly serious, it would be the stuff of comedy, the best of sketch comedy in this part of the milky way. 

    Given that performance, the extraordinary number of lies, the chain of thought that ran like like a wart hog roller skating on marbles, and the beating he took of the righteous, in your face "they call you a disgrace" variety, why any thinking, discerning person would trust him again is beyond even the most sympathetic analyst this side of forever. 

    You can be the most partisan Republican, the farthest right positioned conservative, the angriest anti Democrat, a rich/or poor, old white man scared of the communist dust that gathers in your closet and still not justify voting for the deposed despot. As Republican grandees warned in 2016, he is unfit for public service and not to be trusted. This time around there are some 200 Republicans of the highest calibre, who worked for him who say the man is a danger to the world.

    He demonstrated that he is not of sound mind.

    I know there is no reaching the woman in the Trump and Jesus T-shirt saying that Joe Biden is dead, or the crowd that thinks Democrats eat babies, or that curious breed of evangelistic, they call themselves Christians, who believe that a convicted rapist, felon, swindler, is the kind of person to usher in an age when their "religion" will convert the US into the new heaven.

    I give the Donald a full thumbs up thanks for launching some of the best dog reaction videos in history and the absolute beauty of the women, Taylor Swift included, who have posted lovely and dramatic photos of themself with their beloved cat or cats. My favorites are the dogs barking or seeking a hiding spot as his Lord Narcissus blubbers on screen.

    Mom used to say if you can't say something nice about someone, say nothing.

I'll quote mom, I think she would say Donald is the best "blow hard" in the world. 

Mustering up the nicest thing I can say, I'll quote my Dad, he'd say Donald is a world class "bull shit artist."

    Millions of Americans are beginning to realize he is and has always been a fraud.

        I moderated many debates and as we entered the age when candidates answered your question with a response to their own unspoken and coached question, I'd press back, even noting when they refused to answer the question posed. ABC did a nice job of putting the question on the screen as both VP Harris and Miracle Don rarely responded to what was asked. Such evasion and obfuscation is sadly accepted as part of the performative game. 

        The moderators did a noble job of fact checking and challenging as the debate went on. With Trump, who only lies when his mouth is open, it is a near impossible task. He like many of his posse have trouble with truth, even reality.

        It's not over. Harris was competent, in command, successfully whooped Donald with prosecutorial and debate skills and showed that she can and will govern for all and promised not be a divider. Is that enough? Stay tuned.

        See you down the trail.

Pinedorado Again...

The Cambria hometown tradition that began in 1949 marched off today under partly cloudy skies that opened to full sunshine and blue. Neighbors and friends and a few folks from the California Central Coast. Enjoy a curbside view...

 

       See you down the trail.