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As I come to the close of a 3 day weekend, I look over my to do list and realize, I didn’t do shit.

Helena got a lot done, 3 more chapters on the book we are translating, but I’m now a full chapter and a half behind, and the one before that I’m going to have to go over again, I did such a slack job. 

The kids did not go to the cottage as planned, because Isabel was ill, so we spent the whole  time at home and, for me, that means a lot of time wasted on facebook.  We did watch a few movies, so that was interesting, so  I’ll give you my 4 reviews.

We’re the Millers: Light comedy with Jennifer Aniston, I went into it with low expectations and wound up laughing my ass off.  The scene with the other family in the campground was hysterical.  The  spider bite scene was hysterical.  The baby in a blanket bit was a direct ripoff from an I Love Lucy episode, but it was hysterical.  I didn’t care for the ending, it was a cheap cliche for a marijuana comedy, but still…if you, like me, watch movies just to make you laugh and don’t worry about redeeming social values….this is a good one.

Gone Girl – Pretty exciting psycho thriller, right up to the last 5 minutes.  The ending made no damned sense at all.  He knew she  wasn’t pregnant, he was not trapped.  If he wanted out, she couldn’t  stop him.  The only explanation is that he was just as fucked in the head as she was, and that would be a serious stretch of the imagination, because people that fucked up in  the head are one in a million.

Yes Man – A Jim Carrey thing.  Not as slipstick as his early movies, or Me, Myself and Irene, not as intellectually complex as Eternal Sunshine, the  Truman Show or The Cable Guy, I’d put it more in  the Liar, Liar or Bruce Almighty category – a nice, little, romantic comedy with  a surrealist plot, and a few chances for Jim Carrey to do the Jim Carrey thing, i.e. flopping around and going nuts like a modern day Jerry Lewis, woven into the  script.  If you like Jim Carrey, you’ll like it.  If you don’t,  you won’t.

Twinsters – A made for TV, or maybe even made for  the internet, documentary about identical twin sisters who didn’t know of each other’s existence until they found each other through facebook.  Korean, one grew up in New Jersey and one in Paris.  It was cute, and real, but more like something you’d watch on  TV because there’s nothing better on than watching a movie.  They met, they were happy, their friends were all happy, everybody was happy.

And that’s my blog for tonight.

I remembered my dream when I woke up this morning, actually, the last 3 dreams, or the last 3 scenes of one dream, I’m not sure if dreams are divided into scenes or acts like plays, I’m pretty sure  anything remembered is in the last couple of minutes before waking up so while they might be completely disjointed, they are still part of the same thing.
I thought, hey, those were kind of significant, they were interesting  and sort of related to reality, maybe they mean something, so I wrote them down and now, I might as well write them down  again.

In the first one, or at any rate as far back as I can remember, still probably somewhere in the middle, I was sitting in a class and my  old buddy Karel, who I knew when he was in Prague but he left years back and now is living the good life on a beach on an out of the way island in the Philippines, turned around and put a salad on my desk.  Maybe telling me I should eat healthier, I don’t know.  Then we were standing out in the middle of a green lawn, with some little white daisies poking through and I was thinking “This is the most beautiful place on Earth” except I looked a little bit further out and I was in the circular lawn in the middle of a freeway cloverleaf and it really wasn’t that special so I realized I must be stoned.  Which is not illogical, since I often am, and when you are, as you well know, a green lawn in the middle of a freeway cloverleaf can seem to be the most beautiful place on Earth.

In the second part my wife was with me, and I was eating some kind of a light purple jelly candy, like a bar shaped thing, and I was saying to Helena, “Wow, you’ve got to try this, it’s the most amazing thing in the world” but she ignored me and then we were looking into other people’s flats, the doors were all open and we could see the junk strewn around inside and they all looked like they were squats or homeless shelters or something.

In the 3rd part, and a theme was becoming clear, it was all people and scenes from my early days in Prague, i.e. 98-99, and I was standing in line at a bank or a post office with my friend Pamela, I knew it was her but in the dream she looked like (perhaps was being played by) Reese Witherspoon, and we had to buy some kind of travel document but for some reason I’d sent her up to the counter to get it and it was 500kc and as I realized she was going to pay for it I reached for my wallet and was fishing out 250 but she ran out, with the document which was like a little purple square and it looked like a piece of chocolate and so I ran after her and saw her walking kitty corner across the street in heavy traffic, so I followed down one side of the street looking for a place to cross and my shoe fell off and I thought “Never mind, it will catch up” but  after a few more steps remembered that shoes don’t do that, they have no independent means of mobility, so I went back to look for it and that’s when I woke up.

I decided that what the dream probably meant was that I should write about that time in my life.

There is no  doubt that January, 2o16, will be remembered in history as a dark month for rock and roll.  David Bowie, Glenn Frey  of the Eagles, Paul Kantner of Jefferson Airplane, and many  others.  Those are just the names that spring to mind.  It seems that musical legends have been dying  every couple of days this month.

Of course, things get a bit confusing  and unclear because  half the  time you see it posted that one of your musical heroes  has died and then, one or two comments after yours, someone will write “This happened in 2012,” for instance, and  you’re left with egg on  your  face.

Then, inevitably, someone will post “Yes, but it’s  still sad.”  Yes, it is.  It was sad  when Elvis died, and Buddy Holly, and Glenn Miller.  It’s also said that, a few short years after their death, we have forgotten that they’re dead, and so fell for the ruse.  Which probably  wasn’t a ruse at all, the person posting just did  not  notice the  date.  And also, probably wasn’t such a huge fan of that particular performer as they’d  like you to believe.

Which  is why, when the person who  comments “Yes, but it’s sad anyway”is the original poster, I get a bit miffed.  That is not the proper response.  The proper response is “Oh, sorry, my bad.  I will take it down immediately.”

Because you can do that.  I suspect a lot of people have never noticed that you  can edit your posts or  delete them (top right corner, post or comment, little arrow pointing  down).

So, I almost never say anything.  Sure, I get into arguments on facebook about politics.  Sometimes about grammar.  But, I don’t want to argue with anybody about death.

The disclaimer at the head of this blog has to be this:  I have said before, many times, that Donald Trump has gone  too  far and this will be the end of him.  I said  it right after he announced his  candidacy, with the ‘Mexican rapists’ remark.

I was not  alone in  that assumption.  Like everybody else who is over, say, about 40, I grew up in an era where any politician who said  something so blatantly racist, so crass, so insensitive, would find their career finished.  Even George Wallace, as racist a man who has ever mounted a major run for the presidency (in the 20th  century, anyway) used somewhat more circumspect language.

But, Trump’s popularity grew.  I thought for sure his remarks about Megyn Kelly probably being on her period would finish him off.  After all, no woman is going to vote for  a guy who makes creepy, sexist remarks like  that in public.  But, no, you still see lots of women at his rallies.

The violent incidents at his rallies, the increasingly fascistic tone, retweeting stuff from white supremacists, especially that Bernie Sanders in the gas chamber joke, each time I thought “He’s gone too far.  Now, he’s toast.”  And each time I was wrong.

But, I’m going to predict it again.  Skipping a debate is a  huge mistake, for two reasons.  First, because it makes him look like a  chickenshit.  If he can’t face Megyn Kelly, what’s he going to do if he comes up against Hillary Clinton?  If, God forbid, he should become president, how  is he going  to negotiate with Angela Merkel?  He’s been hit with plenty of ridicule on the internet today, but that won’t faze him – he doesn’t give a shit what we think and neither do his followers.

The second thing is a lot more damaging.  The next time Republicans meet on stage to all make fools of themselves, Trump won’t be there.  Trump fans across America are going to look up and say “Hey, where’s Trump?”

And then they’ll forget him faster than last  week’s contestant in American Idol.  His  base has the  attention span of a  goldfish; out  of sight is out of mind.  By the end of the debate, they’ll be saying “Hey, that Cruz guy  is pretty  good, I liked what he said about bombing the fuck out of everybody,” or “Hey, I forgot Huckabee was  running, maybe I’ll vote for him.”

It’s such an egregious  political mistake that it gives credence to the theory  that it was all a joke campaign from the beginning, maybe instigated  by the Clinton’s, maybe just a scam to sell more copies of his book, maybe some kind of weird social  experiment, a  la Sascha  Baron Cohen.  Maybe he never really wanted it, which would  explain  all of his irrational statements, like “I could shoot  somebody and my voters would still support me.”

Then again, I could be wrong again.

oseph

O.K., tonight a couple of quick comments on things which aren’t that  important, but they’re controversial.

I’m not sorry that what’s his name, the foster children farmer from the Bundy gang, is dead.  He’s a guy who’s been waving his gun around, threatening the police and daring them to try and arrest him, since this whole thing began.  No crying now, he got what he was asking for.  I guess there are still some on site, screaming through their beards that they will die  defending their freedom to take public lands from the public, which is all of us, and give it to the people, which is them, but one is dead, eight are in jail, and that’s a real good start.

As regards the rather unusual casting decision to have Joseph Fiennes, whitey white Joseph Fiennes, play Michael Jackson in an upcoming British made for TV movie, “Elizabeth, Michael, and Marlon.”  It’s bizarre, but I can live with it.  Michael Jackson had had so much surgery by that time in his life (the film is about the story, which Elizabeth Taylor denied but, hey, it could have happened, that Elizabeth Taylor, Michael Jackson and Marlon Brando wanted to get the hell out of New York on 9/11, like who wouldn’t, but they couldn’t get a plane out, like they normally would have, being rich people, so they rented a car and went road tripping like ordinary folks) that getting a black actor to play  him would be almost as dishonest.

I think Jackson would  approve.  Whatever Michael was, he was trying to be something else, so his legacy is  going to be a bit flexible, too.