New Year's Eve

           Another New Year’s Eve, another time for promising to lose that ugly forty pounds hanging over our belts, to forgive and forget past grievances, to think more and say less, to pray that Robert Mueller will finally conclude his investigation. There. That should be enough to resolve.

          In years far past, 365 days seemed to move lazily along, like a meandering stream through the landscape of our lives, with only a few changes in lifestyle and technology, few surprises, just 365 steps from A to B. But now it’s like a dash from alpha to omega. Now, on the eve of year 2019, there’s no way to predict where we’ll be or what the world will be like a year from now. Will we be on the brink of war with China or Russia? Will we be in the depth of a recession almost as deep as what we had in the 1930’s? Will we have a wall on our southern border that actually works? Will our highways be nothing but giant potholes? Will Jeff Bezos own the world? Will Alexa and her sisters become androids to do our bidding, maybe even deciding for us what our bids should be? Will Donald Trump still be our president? So many questions, so few answers.

          Should I put on red underwear tonight hoping for a little romance? Nah, my tighty-whiteys will have to do. Should I eat twelve grapes to represent my twelve hopes for the New Year? Nah, that’s only wishful thinking. We need to do more than hope. We need to consider who to vote for in the 2020 election. The political jockeying will begin a year ahead of time. It looks like there could be anywhere from fifteen to thirty democrats who will decide to give it a run. We may have to draw a bigger circle to hold all those hats. Will Trump be the republican nominee or will the GOP have come to their senses and decided they’ve had enough of him? So many questions, so few answers.

          I haven’t yet decided if this will be my last blog or if I should just take a mini-vacation from blogging. I guess I’ll just have to wait and see. But until then, Happy New Year, everyone.

          You will notice that the sofa is empty except for the New Year’s Eve leavings. Rosalie and I never made it to midnight. Our sleep gods called to us at 10:00.

         

POTUS & Medical Costs

President Trump (I’m trying to see if my calling him by his title will help me to better tolerate his many foibles.) and First Lady Melania visited our troops in Iraq over the holidays, and in President Trump’s speech to them he claimed that they hadn’t had any pay raises in ten years and that they were soon going to get a ten percent (or even higher) pay raise. He made it sound like he would be personally responsible for this raise. “Huzzah, Huzzah, for me! See how much I’ve done for you?” But what he said wasn’t true. There have been annual pay raises for the last ten years and in 2019 they will not be getting anything like the ten percent he mentioned. It’s not so much that he was lying; he was just aggrandizing what he thought may have been true. He exaggerates more often than he lies. Words come spilling out of him without any fact-checking or with very little thought and without heeding anything his advisers tell him. And if they tell him things he doesn’t want to hear, he fires them and looks for someone who’ll tell him what he does want to hear. His disregard for facts and truth frightens me more than all the other things that frighten me about his presidency.

          And now he’s threatening to close our southern border and continue his federal shutdown until he gets the five billion for his wall. Just like a temper-tantrumy kid, his next move will probably be to stomp his feet and hold his breath until he turns blue. I think I’d enjoy seeing that. How are we going to survive for another two years of this man? No one seems to know the answer. I guess my calling him President Trump didn’t help. I still can’t tolerate him. A POTUS by any other name would still not smell as sweet.

* * * * * *

             Medical costs—what’s billed and what’s approved. I just examined the summary of the medical charges that my insurance provider sent me regarding my recent hospital stay in November. These numbers are for the total charges paid by Medicare and Arizona Blue Cross-Blue Shield. The differences between what was billed and what was approved is dramatic, mind-blowing . . . and very confusing. For example, the hospital bill for five days (room and lab work) was just under $40,000 and what was approved was just under $9,000. Do lawyers get together to negotiate what will actually be paid? Then there are all the charges submitted by various doctors who may have spoken to me or waved hello as they went by my door--$1750 billed, $1060 approved; Sonora Quest Lab for bloodwork, $590 billed, $72 approved. The totals for everything connected to my five-day hospital stay--$44,400 billed, $11,000 approved. Can you understand why I’m confused? These numbers make no sense; these charges make no sense. I wonder how it would all work out if we had socialized medicine regulated by the federal government instead of all these haphazard charges that sound way too exorbitant. I’m sure I won’t live long enough to have an answer to my wonderment.

Financial Stupidity

                It’s the day after Christmas and our life can now settle back into more normal concerns. Gray skies, chillier than usual, high only 58 degrees. Wah! We Arizonans are really spoiled when we complain about highs only in the upper 50’s, while most of the country is freezing or shoveling ass-deep snow. I remember what that daily shoveling was like in my lake-effect-snow life south of Buffalo. I’d rather be complaining about fifty degrees than battling the snow monsters.

          I’ve been looking for something to write about in this blog and came up with socialized medicine. I must confess I’m not very well-informed on the subject. I know it’s one of the sticking points that separate most Republicans from most Democrats, an offshoot of the states’ rights versus federal control. It seems, though, that we’re much closer to socialized medicine that we were only a few decades ago. We now have Medicare, Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act. The question about universal medical care involves the financing. Who’d be paying for it? Employers and individuals or the federal government? Bernie Sanders had quite a few voters who agreed with his plan. Somewhere recently, I saw an estimate of what a totally socialized medicine would cost, a little over three trillion dollars a year. Whew! That a bunch of money. But wouldn’t that cost come down if the federal government regulated what doctors, hospitals, and pharmaceutical companies could charge? Canada seems to have a system that works. How are they able to maintain reasonable medical costs? I may be a dumb-head about the issue, but I’m amazed and appalled at the exorbitance of our present medical costs, especially that of the pharmaceuticals. I can also see that we’d have fewer students wanting to become doctors and surgeons if their fees were regulated to levels they considered unacceptable. So, did the quality of medical care come down to unacceptable levels in Canada? I’m betting they didn’t, but I’d have to talk to a Canadian to see what he/she thought. In any case, something needs to be done about universal medical care one way of the other. I’m hoping for the other.

          Another thought about our needs—our rapidly failing infrastructure. When are we going to do something about our highways, bridges, power grids, rail systems, airports, and all the rest of our infrastructure? According to Fortune Magazine, we’d need about four trillion over the next ten years to fix it all. Even now, instead of spending the five billion Trump wants for his wall, why not instead fix at least some of our infrastructure needs?

          Both of these subjects probably reveal my fiscal naiveté. I never got very good grades in economics classes. I still don’t understand national costs and national debts. Where does money originate and when we need some, from whom are we borrowing it?

Happy Holidays

We're only two days away from Christmas and nine days from 2019. This blog may be a bit premature, but who knows what might be happening in the next nine days.

2018 has been for me a most unusual year and for so many unusual reasons. I don’t think any year has ever frightened me more than this past year did. I thought at my age, nothing much could ever again frighten me, but 2018 did. California looked like the entire state might be consumed by flames; in the East villages and entire towns were washed away in torrential rainfall and high winds and tornadoes; mindless shootings became the daily norm; North Korea’s egomaniacal leader had his finger on that awful button; Putin, with his characteristically antagonistic strut, decided to renew the cold war with all the dangers it held in the past; the ice packs north and south are melting at alarming rates; sea levels are rising; the amount of plastic we dispose of in the seas grows to unimaginable amounts; and racism, sexism, white supremacy, neo-Nazism have reared their ugly heads again. And now, after driving another adviser out of his cabinet with his unadvised return of troops from our fight against ISIS, Trump is no longer a jester, someone to laugh at for his exaggerated Tweets and misspellings; now he's become someone to fear. Yes, there was plenty in 2018 to scare the bejeezus out of me.

All right, let’s flip the coin. What good came out of 2018? For better or worse, Artificial Intelligence is here and will become more and more important in 2019 and all years thereafter; all forms of cancer are about to be defeated; the #MeToo Movement got us on the start toward a more equitable relationship between the many, diverse sexes; the Lady’s Star was born and we’re all the better for it; and Tiger began his comeback. Thank you, 2018.

I hope all my readers have a happy, fearless holiday.
Please forgive me if I’ve offended anyone with my secular attitude toward this season. Even the word holidays (or holy days) is offensive to some because it seems to ignore the birth of Christ. According to the dictionary, though, the word can mean either a religious festival or a day or days of recreation.

 I consider these late December days as more a celebration of the winter solstice than of the birth of Christ. Not that I don’t believe Christ’s birth isn’t a valid reason to celebrate, but I view Christ as a messiah more than the son of God, a messenger who brought forth in us the values inherent in Christianity. I know that many of you would say, “But how can you consider yourself a Christian if you don’t believe Christ was the son of God?” I believe in the human values he exemplifies but not his holiness or sanctity. I can’t buy into all the smoke and mirrors in the Catholic faith nor even the softer but no less sanctimonious Protestant beliefs. Am I then a pagan? 

The word pagan, just like heathen, has become a pejorative for someone in the distant past who may have been polytheistic or, according to Christians, a non-believer, but who was actually someone who feared the shortening of the day, the dropping of the temperatures, and the closing in of the darkness. When that time came that all was reversed, the winter solstice around December 21, they celebrated. Who wouldn’t? Here comes light and warmth and out goes dark and cold. The barren fields would spring to life again and all that was good was renewed. 

Most scholars agree that the date of Christ’s birth was probably a tagalong for that pagan celebration. Scholars debate and debate, carefully examining scripture and calendars and come up with a wide variety of possible birth dates. The Mormans believe it was April 6, and most others believe it was sometime in the fall, others in early December, still others on almost any date on the calendar. There is no consensus. So, why not combine it with the pagans’ celebration and clink our glasses for either or both causes to celebrate—the birth of Christ and the lengthening of the days? The birth of Christ as well as Santa Claus and Christmas trees and yuletide carols and a dawning New Year are all elements of and justification for our celebration over the holidays.  Even Gary Trudeau had fun with this debate.

Therefore, Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays and Welcome 2019.

Bird Box & Plastic

           

            Last week we watched Stephen Colbert interview Sandra Bullock on The Late Show and heard what she had to say about her new Netflix film Bird Box. It sounded like it would be good, so with nothing better to see on regular tv programming, we turned to Netflix to watch it. It starred one of our favorite ladies from Speed, While You Were Sleeping, The Blind Side, and Gravity, still one of our favorites even though she also starred in quite a few stinkers like The Heat and The Lake House. These last two should have sounded a warning but we ignored it.

Bird Box was another take on a post-apocalyptic threat to mankind, sort of like A Quiet Place but with a visual instead of an auditory threat. All about some mysterious alien force that causes people to kill themselves when they look at the sky or into the eyes of anyone affected by this strange disease. So one learns early on not to look at the light or into any affected eyes. Best to cover all windows or to wear a blindfold if one has to go outside. A pregnant Malorie (Sandra Bullock) has narrowly escaped the trap and makes it into a house full of others who have found this refuge, sort of a representative group of mankind’s types, like the folks in Ship of Fools by Katherine Anne Porter. John Malkovich is the leader of the group and carries a shotgun at all times to ward off anyone who tries to get into the house. The story is told over a five year period, flashing back and forth from when the suicides first took place to her harrowing, blindfolded ride down a river in a small rowboat with her two children, called Girl and Boy. I’m not sure what the significance of those names had to do with anything, but it certainly gave us something to ponder. They were making this boat trip because they’d heard about a community along the river that was safe from the danger. We kept waiting for what we were so sure would be good to start happening. I mean, after all, it’s Sandra Bullock. Right?  Okay, it was Sandra Bullock, but it was more wrong than right. It made Sea of Trees look like an Oscar winner. The reviews of Bird Box were mixed, many of them finding it far better than we did. I must be getting too irascible to review movies. I wanted to like this science-fictiony premise but it was just too stupid. Just give me a quiet place and let me take off my blindfold.

* * * **

What about plastic? We’ve all seen and were appalled by that Texas-sized mess of plastic junk floating in the Pacific. But what can we do about it? It seems that most plastic takes about 450 years to biodegrade, nearly half a century. And we keep making more and more products out of this almost indestructible stuff. We can try to recycle it, but one stat I just read said that 90.5% of all plastic is not recycled. I guess that means that most of it makes its way down rivers to various oceans and seas to pollute our waters forever. China, which used to buy our plastic refuse for recycling, has now said they wanted no more. There are so many different kinds of plastic, each of which needs to be separated from the others before any reuse can happen, that the process is too expensive. How could we use all this plastic stuff? We could make highways that are virtually indestructible, or make plastic blocks for building houses. Now here’s an idiotic use I just came across, edible plastic retainers for six-packs of beer or soda. Edible. Now, who in hell would be dumb enough to want to eat fake plastic beer binders? Maybe dunk them in a fake plastic dipping sauce? C’mon, folks, let’s make plastic roads and houses.

The Sea of Trees

         

          Since the holiday season has so flooded the screen with reruns and Christmas drivel, we went on Netflix the other night to find a movie worth watching. We found The Sea of Trees with Matthew McConaughey, Naomi Watts, and Ken Watanabe. I assumed, somewhat erroneously, that anything McConaughey chose to do would be good or, maybe like Mud or The Dallas Buyers Club, even very good. Wrong. Although this wasn’t a clinker, it wasn’t a diamond in the rough either.

          Arthur Brennan has recently lost his wife (Naomi Watts) to cancer and a tragic auto accident and he’s decided he should find “the perfect place to die,” where he might kill himself to show his dead wife that he really loved her despite all their grievances. He flies to Japan (one-way ticket, no luggage—sort of a dead giveaway for his reason to go there) where, at the base of Mount Fuji, he enters a park, a sea of trees where others before him have gone to end their lives.

          The story is told in a series of flashbacks to show us what his marriage was like before and after his wife’s death. On his trek into this vast parkland and just as he is about to take his life with drugs he’s brought with him, he meets a Japanese man (Ken Watanabe) who is in much pain from various wounds, apparently from his own attempt to kill himself. He helps the man, even giving him CPR when he loses consciousness. Together, both now deciding for life instead of death, they try to find their way back to the parking area. After much stumbling and falling they find a small tent left behind by someone who has successfully killed himself where they take shelter from the heavy rainfall. Brennan makes the difficult decision to leave his exhausted companion behind to find a way out of the forest, vowing to the man that he would come back for him.

          Gus Van Sant directed, and one would think that someone who has Good Will Hunting and Milk under his director’s belt that he might have done better with this one. Wrong again. As I said at the beginning, the film was somewhere between not very good and not too bad, sort of that middle ground where low-budget films go to die. Or, in this case, go into a sea of trees.

Stray Thoughts & Neologisms

I may have used some of this in an earlier blog, but I can't remember. So, in case I have, here it is again.

Thoughts:

⧪Isn’t it sad that some people can turn on tv and not find

               a single program that insults their intelligence?

⧪The oral comprehensive (or any difficult test) exam might be

               a situation in which the testers slowly squeeze the testees.

⧪The things that make people laugh say a lot about their intelligence.

⧪The things that make people cry say a lot about their sensitivity.

⧪Note how these adjectives are all close in meaning but all different:

          smart, intelligent, wise, knowledgeable.

⧪One cannot achieve wisdom without first being intelligent.

⧪Intelligence must precede wisdom.

Neologisms:

🔻Arbitrator: A cook that leaves Arby's to work at McDonald's.

🔻Avoidable: What a bullfighter tries to do.

🔻Bernadette: The act of torching a mortgage

🔻Burglarize: What a crook sees withControl: A short, ugly inmate

🔻Counterfeiters: Workers who put together kitchen cabinets

🔻Eclipse: what an English barber does for a living

🔻Eyedropper: a clumsy ophthalmologist

🔻Heroes: what a guy in a boat does

🔻Left Bank: what the robber did when his bag was full of loot

🔻Misty: How golfers create divots

🔻Paradox: two physicians

🔻Parasites: what you see from the top of the Eiffel Tower.

🔻Pharmacist: a helper on the farm

🔻Polarize: what penguins see with

🔻Primate: removing your spouse from in front of the TV 

🔻Relief: what trees do in the spring 

🔻Rubberneck: what you do to relax your wife 

🔻Seamstress: describes 250 pounds in a size 6 

🔻Selfish: what the owner of a seafood store does 

🔻Sudafed: brought litigation against a government official 

🔻Subdued: . . . like a guy, like works on one of those, like, submarines, man

Freedom & Stephen Colbert

          The day is December-fine here in Arizona—calm, sunny, somewhere in the low 70’s. And the boys are out in full force this morning with their rumbling and roaring dissonance cloaking the heavens. Without any intended sexism, by “the boys” I mean the men and women who fly training missions in their F-35’s out of Luke Air Force Base here in the West Valley. Flying in twos and threes, they create such noise that all conversation is suspended until they pass out of sight. Many of us in Arizona like to call it the sound of freedom. Isn’t it sad to think that ours or anyone else’s freedom has to be guarded by such military force that no one would dare to try to take it? You’d think that individual freedom would be the lifelong goal of everyone on earth. But it isn’t. Most of those who live under the iron hand of one dictator or another have no idea what individual freedom means. Does it mean that each of us would be free to do anything we want? No. We would still have to abide by the legal principle that your freedom ends where my nose begins. But the freedom to do and think and say anything we want so long as it causes no harm to anyone else is well worth fighting and dying for. So, fly on Luke Fly-boys and -girls. The sounds you make are welcome to my ears and are a welcome reminder to me that I still have my individual freedom as long as I continue to know where everyone’s nose is.

          Stephen Colbert again. I wonder if Colbert is ever frightened by what could happen to him if one of the Trump supporters decided to take him out for all his jibes against their hero, the Donald. He probably is, just a little anyway, but he never mentions it. Much as I admire him for his intelligence and his comic genius, I wonder if he realizes that he might be a contributor to what Trump calls "Fake News.” Colbert loves to highlight some of Trump’s tweets to demonstrate the man’s fondness for exaggeration or downright lying or his ignorance, especially when it comes to spelling (for example, the comic “smocking gun” Trump in a recent tweet mentions  not once but twice). But Colbert doesn’t always make it clear which tweets are actually Trump’s and which have been slightly or grossly doctored for the sake of humor. A lot of viewers would take them all as true when in fact some would be “fake.” I also heard him say to one of his guests that he had read The Lord of the Rings fifty times, and he wasn’t going for humor. C’mon, Stephen. No one, not even the nerdiest Tolkein fan, has read The Lord of the Rings fifty times. Long before the fiftieth reading, the reader somewhere in the twentieth or thirtieth would have spit up both Gollum and the ring and never gone back for a second helping.

Big Brother

Privacy and Big Brother. Now, in addition to fingerprints and retinas, we have facial recognition. It’s not quite there yet for all of us, but it soon will be. If you buy into all the digital stuff on network cops and robbers shows, it’s already possible to get a name lined up with a face as long as that face is on file somewhere.  Just as BB will soon have all our fingerprints and retinas on file, he will also have photos of all our faces. One of our major airlines now uses facial recognition to allow passengers to check themselves in and board the plane without any help from an agent. And the places where one might go to hide are fewer and fewer. Maybe the depths of Montana or Idaho mountains, but even there a drone might spot us, take our picture, and obtain our name based on our face. I’m not yet sure on which side of the argument I stand. Do I so treasure my privacy that I’m willing to give up the safety of social protection, or would I give up privacy for safety? I don’t know. But very soon now the question will need to be answered.

And speaking of Big Brother, what about Donald Trump? I read everything I can find about him, not from any adulation but from curiosity. Trump news is like picking at a scab. It usually itches like the devil and picking at it too often causes it to bleed again, but the itch just won’t go away. Nor will he, even though a majority of us would like him to. Just examine his base (and what a good name for it—“his base”). Generally, his base is made up of white males who favor guns and oppose abortion, are narrow-minded and less educated than average, are creationists, nationalists, racists, misogynists, white supremacists, and homophobes. Then there are those in the financial top 1% who support his tax policies but not the man. Polls keep suggesting that about 40% of eligible voters support Trump. What does that say about those who make up that 40%? Nothing very good.

He's Baaaack

          Okay, okay, I know there are a few of you out there who said, ‘Nah, he won’t be able to quit. He’ll be baaaaack (like Arnold).” I found that my days were too empty without this task of blogging every two or three days. And my suggesting that I was running out of things to say just wasn’t true. There are always things to write about.

          For example, there’s the five-year-old girl whose parents were so offended by what they called mocking laughter directed at their daughter by a Southwestern Airlines agent that they demanded and got an apology from Southwestern. Mocking laughter? Probably not, at least not mocking. How about laughter at the silliness of the little girl’s given name, Abcde, pronounced, according to her parents, “Ab-city.” What might have motivated them to name her Abcde? The cleverness? The cuteness? The uniqueness? Probably all of the above, in an age when too many new parents are searching for some way, anyway, to find a name that no one else has ever come up with. Did they not foresee laughter in their daughter’s future? I mean, c’mon, Abcde? Yeah, she’ll have a lifetime of listening to laughter, a lifetime of having to explain how she got that moniker. I am reminded of a character in Joseph Heller’s Catch-22. His father, whose last name was Major, as a cruel joke on his recently born son, signed his birth certificate Major Major Major. And then to further the black humor in the novel, Heller involved him in a typical governmental snafu. When Major Major was drafted into the air force in WWII, he was automatically assigned the rank of major, thus making him Major Major Major Major. He spent his entire air force career hiding from anyone and everyone to avoid giving away his false majority.

          See, there will always be something to write about, some topics more important than others, some sillier than others. After all, I’ll always have Trump, at least for the next two years, hopefully for no more than the next two years.

Final Blog

This will be my last blog, a review of A Star Is Born, and what will be my last reference to my Countdown.

          I remember over fifty years ago when I was teaching in Barstow, California, telling my students that Barbra Streisand would become such a STAR (yes, caps) that soon no one would be able to afford her. This was in 1965 right after her first television special My Name Is Barbra and Color Me Barbra in 1966. If you’re too young to have ever seen these first two specials, you should go to Netflix to see what I saw more than fifty years ago.  

          I think I’m safe in saying the same thing about another singer who will become such a STAR (yes, caps) that folks will be stumbling over each other to book her for a concert or a movie. Lady Gaga will become as large a star as Barbra became. Write it down. I’m a latecomer to the Gaga bandwagon. I knew her only from her audacious costumes, blatantly sexual videos, and songs from a style I didn’t like. But she was very much a star to the rest of the music world. I can see her from now on in more and more feature films, turning out more and more pop and jazz albums featuring more and more songs from the Great American Songbook. I can also see her starring in musicals on Broadway.

          There are quite a few parallels between Gaga and Barbra. The most striking is the nose, which many consider too big on both. The second is the remarkable voice. Barbra’s might be considered more perfect technically but Lady Gaga’s is a very close second. Technically, what she did on “Lush Life” on the Tony Bennett special was breathtaking. No singer has ever taken on that difficult song and come even close to what Lady Gaga did with it. I became a fan when on the 87^th Oscars I first heard her sing a tribute to Julie Andrews with selections from The Sound of Music. And now again with what she did in A Star Is Born. Barbra wound up with Oscars for acting in Funny Girl and best song with Paul Williams for “Evergreen” (from her 1976 A Star Is Born), a Tony for Star of the Decade, lots of Grammies, and lots of Emmys. Guess what—Lady Gaga in A Star Is Born will probably win an Oscar for best female lead and for best song with Bradley Cooper, “Shallow.” How are those for Streisand parallels?

          Now, what about the movie? I thought it was tear-jerking fantastic, not just for my adoration of Lady Gaga and her and Cooper’s songs, but also for what Bradley Cooper did as director and male lead and for doing very well with his own singing. The script did pretty much the same as the previous three versions of this story but differed somewhat with the modernization of the conflict between Ally and Jack. In the opening credits, the film even paid homage to Judy Garland, the second star in the Star Is Born series, by giving us eight bars of the introduction to “Over the Rainbow.”

In an interview with Stephen Colbert, Lady Gaga said she quit using makeup for three weeks before filming just to get used to her normal face, which she thought wasn’t very attractive. I kept looking in the frequent close-ups to see what she considered a blemished face. Couldn’t see it. I also kept wondering what they’d do about her two tattoos on the inside of both arms. Wouldn’t they be too much a signature of Lady Gaga and not the character Ally? Yes. So they covered both of them. Jackson Maine (Bradley Cooper) kept telling her she was beautiful and she kept denying it. She’s beautiful in the same way Barbra is beautiful, big nose and all. I loved the movie and would recommend it with five of five stars. What will be the Academy Awards view? I think it will be nominated for Best film, Best female lead, Best male lead, Best director, Best song (“Shallow”), and possibly even Best supporting actor with Sam Elliot as Jackson’s older brother Bobby. What will it win? Best film, best female lead, best male lead, best director, and best song (even though at least two others from A Star Is Born might have been nominated).

What about Lady Gaga? I hate having to call her that. The “Gaga” is too vomitous for her, but her real name is also uncomfortable—Angelina Joanne Germanotta. I think from now on I’ll just call her Lady.

This will be my last blog. I had wanted to get to the end of the year, but I just don’t have enough interest to keep it going. If I had to find a movie to review for my last blog, though, I couldn’t have found a better one than A Star Is Born.

This will also be my last Countdown. My trip to Harkins Theater to see A Star Is Born presented a much greater problem than I thought it would be. It took me forever to get from the car into the Harkins multiplex and then into the theater. I was using my four-wheel walker with attached seat and I had to sit down every forty or fifty steps, then wait five minutes for my oxygen level to get back to acceptable. Finally I got into the theater and got seated, panting like a dog. Watched the whole movie worrying about whether I would or wouldn’t have enough oxygen to make it back to the car. I did. But I also decided that this would be the last movie I’d ever see in a theater. It had been too tough on me and too tough on Rosalie, my caregiver. Nothing from now on but home films on Netflix or Dish rentals. That made me wonder how much longer I’d be able to go out for dinner with Rosalie. Probably not much longer. Nothing from then on but home-cooked meals mainly prepared by chef Marie Callender. That made me wonder again what my acceptable level of life is. My world keeps shrinking, my interests keep dying, and my acceptable level of life keeps going down. I’m not suicidal, but I do keep wondering how I might get to Oregon if push ever comes to shove.

The Match

        

  I swore I wouldn’t do it, yet there I was, about to watch The Match between Tiger and Phil. The watching isn’t what I swore I wouldn’t do; it’s the paying of $19.95 to watch it. Something about pay-per-view television rubs me very wrong. Would it be worth twenty bucks to watch these two engage in a meaningless match? There won’t be any commercial breaks, so what will we be seeing and hearing between shots? Tiger and Phil walking to their balls; Tiger and Phil trying to trash talk; talking heads in the studio trying to say something interesting. None of it was very interesting or exciting. All I kept thinking about when they were striding to their balls was that Phil sounded like a panting dog, either from the pace of the striding or from the pressure he felt. The only pressure was from both of them wanting so bad to beat on the other. It certainly didn’t come from the $9,000,000 they were playing for since that amount would be chump change for either of them. This match caused me to come up with several new words: “i-con-ic” (in which the viewers were conned), “puttrid” (just add a “t” to “putrid” and that’s what their putting was), and “mediocre” (just go to a Webster’s, look under the “m” and find a picture of this dynamic duo right next to “mediocre”). And while you're at it, go to "match" and take a farmer's match to another picture of Tiger and Phil. Even Charles Barkley, late in the round, said he could beat either one of them. And if you’ve ever seen Charles swing a golf club, you may understand just how bad he thought they were playing. It was four hours of awful. Neither could hit irons anywhere close to pins; neither could make a putt. And the trash talk was more like kitty litter conversation. I believe this match did more harm to the game of golf than anything else in the last fifty years. Please, whoever came up with this idea, never ever try it again.

Countdown

I seem to be running out of topics for my blog at the same rate as my living space is shrinking. On my blog, I’m coming to the end of a ten-year tunnel and the dimensions of my world are closing in like the walls in Poe’s “The Pit and the Pendulum.” I haven’t written any Countdowns for over two months. It’s not that my life has gotten better, thus no need for a Countdown. Quite the opposite. My mental world is still as extensive as it’s always been, but my physical world is down to about 3200 square feet, pretty much the radius of a circle determined by my concentrator in the middle with my 32-foot oxygen tether. As my world narrows, my interests shrink. Favorite television shows can carry me only so far. Televised sports don’t excite me with Arizona teams stinking it up, and professional golf is taking its year-end vacation. Foods no longer tempt me. I’m not quite to the point where all items on a menu disgust me, but I’m moving in that direction. And now, with the Romaine lettuce scare, salads not only revolt me, they frighten me. Where am I, then, on my trip to midnight? Somewhere between 11:56 and 11:57.

Our Thanksgiving meal this year will be really simple: honey ham, potatoes au gratin, asparagus, soft rolls, and pumpkin pie with whipped cream. Sounds good and sounds really simple both in preparation and cleanup. That pretty much describes my life now—simple prep, simple cleanup.

This ‘n’ That

Forgive me for another comment about dreams and some of my weird ones. Last night, somewhere in that strange land in our heads, I wrote what I thought was a really funny, really clever bit involving a pun. See what you think:

When Charlie woke up in the ER after his bike accident, he realized he had lost one of his fingers. “Well,” he moaned, “I have nine left” A man in the bed next to him raised his bandaged hand and said “Me eight.” Later, Charlie sighed and said, “I have bad dreams about that oaf in the Oval Office.” The man next to him echoed, “Me eight.”

What do you think? If you got the pun, you may have moaned like Charlie. It wasn’t a very good pun, but it sounded so much better when I dreamed it than it does in the light of day. The key? The transposition of the words too and eight.

* * * * *

          I recently spent a week or so in the hospital, for pneumonia again. And now that I’m home I find that my librium isn’t so equi anymore. I might come up with a neologism for it: tippsilibrium.

* * * * *

          In one of the Keller stories by Lawrence Block, Keller is having a medium read his palm.

“She was still holding his hand. Keller had noticed that this was one of the ways a woman let you know she was interested in you. Women touched you a lot in completely innocent ways, on the hand or the arm or the shoulder, or held your hand longer than they had to. If a man did that it was sexual harassment, but it was a woman’s way of letting you know she wouldn’t mind being harassed herself.”

I know, I know, I’ve already written quite a bit about harassment but here’s another thought regarding this subject. I’m a huge fan of the hug as a truly important part of touching. At what point does a hug become harassment? Nearly everyone by now has seen the video of the little boy and his mother leaving a music festival with a hundred or more people sitting on the grass. The boy, at most two-years-old, maybe younger, went to each person and gave them a farewell hug. It was so beautiful it brought tears to my eyes. Here’s this little boy demonstrating for the world what a hug is supposed to be, an unspoken union of two people using an embrace to show how we should be, loving, caring for everyone even if we met them only once at a music festival in the park.

Lawrence Block & Life Lessons

          What’s the difference between mashed potatoes and pea soup? Anybody can mash potatoes.

            I was looking for something to read in one of my bookcases and pulled out a weighty Enough Rope, a collection of stories by Lawrence Block. By “weighty” I don’t mean deeply meaningful or with heavy insight. I mean the sucker must weigh about ten pounds. Lawrence Block is one of my favorite authors, especially in the Matt Scudder series, but he, like Stephen King, is a driven spinner of tales, a weaver of word webs, and he just keeps churning out novel after novel, story after story. Tucked in the book was a slip of paper that I must have placed there several years ago, with tiny notes to myself referring to interesting things in one of the Scudders, one of which was the joke at the top of this page—short, funny, a little dark, just like Matt Scudder or Keller the hitman. I’m now reading all the stories about Keller, who, like Scudder, is efficient, plodding, stoic, and somewhat humorless despite the joke at the top. Keller is such an interesting character, a sensitive, likeable fellow who collects rare stamps when he’s not on one of his jobs doing a snuff for the mob. After the stories in Enough Rope, I may have to go back and reread all the novels about Keller. I may have enough rope, but I may not have enough time for all the things I want to read.

* * *

I just switched our cable provider from Direct TV to Dish and our phone and internet service from Century Link to Cox. Why did I do that? I was unhappy with Direct because they didn’t have a connection to Netflix and Dish did. I wanted to watch Netflix movies and series on my television instead of just on computer and IPad. And the price, at least for two years, was considerably less than what I was paying. I didn’t realize that Dish had to take down the Direct TV dish and replace it with theirs. I called Direct to see what I was supposed to do with their dish, which was now lying dead on its side up against the house. “We don’t want it back,” I was told. “It’s yours, so you can do anything you want.” So, I can either leave it where it lies or I can hope our garbage service will take it. What a waste. And this morning the service man from Cox showed up. I had no idea the switchover was going to be so complicated. He was here for nearly three hours. He had to run a new cable from the phone box to the house. I scratch my head. Why couldn’t Cox have used the same line we’d had forever? I thought this would be a ten-minute job of switching my old modem to the new and the phone switch handled seamlessly at the Cox office. Wrong, by almost three hours.

Why do we learn life’s lessons only after it’s too late and not before? At my age, you’d think I’d already learned all the lessons I’d ever need. Not so. And with the speed of technical advances, I’ve probably still got a lot to learn.

Mid-Terms

Just over a week to go before the mid-terms. Hurray! Just over a week to see an end to the ubiquitous tv and postal political smears. Hurray! I and a lot of others can’t wait.

We are reminded by the media that this will probably be a mid-term unlike any before. Why? Because the man in the Oval Office has sparked so much interest and anger that even those who seldom if ever go to the polls will go this time. Will it be that these previous non-voters are now knowledgeable about the people running and the issues involved? No. It will be because Donald Trump has brought them out like lemmings rushing to the sea. Some may vote for Republicans because they still believe he’s the answer to our nation’s ills, but far more will be voting against Republicans because of him. If in 2016 Trump won because so many voters were voting against Hillary Clinton and not necessarily for Trump, there will be an equal or greater number in 2018 voting against Trump and the Republican Party and men running against women. This will be the backlash against Trump’s egomania and fearmongering.

I envision a record voter turnout in this 2018 mid-terms. More than ever before, women, young people, Latinos, African-Americans, and LGBTers will be voting. I see many more women, African-Americans, and Latinos winning. And the Democrats will regain control of both the House and the Senate. Then we’ll see what they do with it. Change our nation’s direction under Trump? Or will it be more of the same old political inaction with empty promises and hands stuck firmly under buttocks?

Titanic, the Musical

A few nights ago we went to the Arizona Broadway Theatre to see Titanic, the Musical. The set design was interesting, as usual, the cast was huge, all with very good voices, and the number of costumes they had to create for this show was mind-boggling. I’d guess they needed at least fifty, most of which would have been from scratch. Or maybe that should be “from stitch.” Was all that enough for me to think it was a great show? Not even close. Of all the musicals we’ve seen at ABT over their fourteen seasons, this one ranks a bit below deck. The music and voices were impressive, especially when all twenty-five were on stage together belting out one of the big numbers, but what they were singing was not. Talk about a forgettable score. It makes me wonder why this show won a Tony for best new musical in 1997.

The set: a semi-circular back wall that looked like the inner hull of a cruise liner with three sets of metal stairs leading up to a railed corridor to suites on the upper decks, the stage floor representing the below decks with circular windows right and left representing portholes when blue lighted and open furnace doors for coal when red lighted. About halfway through the show, when the Titanic struck the iceberg, a zigzag crack in the back wall appeared and grew wider as the show went on.

The costumes: 1912 apparel, gowns for the upper-deckers, common wear for the below-deckers, blue uniforms for three of the ship’s officers, uniforms for the busboy and maid, and all recreated also in white to represent those who died, all together, it would be at least fifty costumes.

The pit band, always very good with their usual eight, expanded to ten (two extra strings) for this show, and they sounded as good as any pit band here or on Broadway could sound.

The whole thing was sort of a downer simply because there were no spoiler alerts needed since everyone knows how this turned out. The show sort of sank just like the ship itself. About the only thing that might have spiced it up a bit would be seeing the young Leo and Kate embracing at the bow. But no Leo, no Kate. And not a very good review. About two stars out of five for me.

Mid-terms, Mega Millions, & AI

A quick comment or two about the mid-terms. Today, October 24, has been designated as Unity Day. How ironic that these last two years have been some of the most un-unifying years in American History. It may not be up to the division prior to and during and after the Civil War, but it’s probably as divisive as the years with FDR. And this election will be more about us versus them than we’ve seen in at least the last fifty years. So, here again, I’d like to post this sign at every voting station: Due to an anticipated voter turnout much larger than originally expected, the polling facilities may not be able to handle the load all at once.  Therefore, Democrats are requested to vote on Tuesday, November 6, and Republicans on Wednesday, Nov. 7. Please pass this message along and help us make sure no one gets left out.

            The Mega Millions jackpot was won yesterday by one unnamed person in South Carolina, with the option to take it all or space it out over thirty years. What difference could it possibly make? The pot was 1.54 billion; the “take it all” would be about $880 million after Uncle Sam takes his cut. What can one person do with that much money? What do those in the 1% do with all their money? I guess they just sit back and watch it grow. To what end, I say? This lucky South Carolinian (Or should that be “unlucky?”) won’t know what to do with it. Past winners of huge jackpots have told how unhappy they were with their newfound wealth. Some have even killed themselves. Just imagine how many relatives, friends, strangers would bug the winner for some of the money. “Ah, come on, Jake, just a million,” they whine. “You won’t even know it’s gone.” So Jake and family pack up and move to a new location, like someone in the witness protection program. Then what do they do? Buy stuff they only dreamed about in their average past? Like huge luxury boats, really expensive sports cars, an entire South Pacific island, mansions along the coast or maybe a castle in Spain? The island might not be a bad idea when the hoards with open hands descend on them. And they’d probably need to buy a jet to get them there without too many people knowing where they were going. Personally, I think I’d rather be one of those who had the first five numbers and won a million. I think I could figure out what to do with a million but not almost 900 of them.

            Another item I saw recently, that scientists are now using artificial intelligence to create paintings. Which then leads to that old question: What exactly is great art? Is it in the imagination of the artist or in his manual skills in creating that art? Why are Picasso, Van Gogh, or Rembrandt greater than other artists? Is the greatness in the creator or in the eye of the beholder? I remember from quite a few years ago when someone passed off canvases done by a monkey and a bunch of people, supposedly those who knew great art when the saw it, proclaimed it the work of genius. Hmmm. And if AI paintings, then why not AI music, both popular and classical? The same questions arise: Is it art or isn’t it? Does it compete with Bach or Mozart or doesn’t it? Can AI learn empathy to an extent that listeners will be moved to tears? Can AI be taught to feel emotion? And, finally, can AI write the great American novel just as so many striving authors have tried to do in the past? Hmmm. It would require that AI be infused with all the experiences of all of man from beginning to end in order to create a fictional world that was believable. Can AI be made creative enough to invent things, like that better mousetrap Emerson told us about? I'm reasonably sure new AI inventions are a done deal. In an essay by Stephen Hawking just before he died, he warned that one of the greatest dangers to mankind and the world will be artificial intelligence. Just as in Asimov’s I,Robot, can AI have a built-in safety valve that requires it to do no harm to humans?I hope so. But, wow! Are we in for an exciting but frightening next ten or twenty years.

Scams, Mid-terms, & Mega Millions

In this age of scams and identity thefts, there are some things you might do to discourage such scammers and thieves. Granted, these first three suggestions relate to writing checks, something most of us no longer do, but it may be useful for some of us seniors who still pay with checks.

The next time you order checks, omit your first name and have only your initials and last name put on them. If someone takes your check book they will not know if you sign your checks with just your initials or your first name but your bank will know how you sign your checks.

When you are writing checks to pay on your credit card accounts, DO NOT put the complete account number on the "For" line. Instead, just put the last four numbers. The credit card company knows the rest of the number and anyone who might be handling your check as it passes through all the check processing channels won't have access to it.

Put your work phone # on your checks instead of your home phone. If you have a PO Box use that instead of your home address. Never have your SS# printed on your checks, you can add it if it is necessary.

In case your wallet is ever lost or stolen, make copies (front and back) of your driver’s license, credit cards, etc. You will know what you had in your wallet and all of the account numbers and phone numbers to call and cancel.

File a police report immediately in the jurisdiction where it was stolen, this proves to credit providers you were diligent, and is a first step toward an investigation (if there ever is one).

Call the three national credit reporting organizations immediately to place a fraud alert on your name and Social Security number. The alert means any company that checks your credit knows your information was stolen and they have to contact you by phone to authorize new credit.

Equifax: 1-800-525-6285

Experian: (formerly TRW): 1-888-397-3742

Trans Union: 1-800-680-7289

Social Security Administration (fraud line): 1-800-269-0271

          The 2018 Mid-Terms will tell us a lot about where we are as a nation and member of the United Nations and where we may be going. Will we actually see a much greater voter turnout with young activists and women who in the past didn’t vote because they felt overlooked? Will all the young people voting for the first time realize the power of their vote and go to the polls, or will they forget what they were so actively protesting half a year ago? Will the MeToo Movement continue its fight for sexual equality or will it retreat quietly in the face of all the added male pressure from men like Donald Trump and his ilk? Will the Democrats regain the majority in the House of Representatives, maybe even the Senate, or will it all remain the same? Two more weeks and we’ll have the answers.

The Mega Million lottery is now up to 1.6 billion, and if no one has the correct numbers in the next day or two, it will probably soar over two billion. I guess I just don’t understand why anyone except Trump and his fellow billionaires would want or need that much money. Better question: Why would Trump and his fellow billionaires want that much more money? The odds against selecting the winning numbers is around one in 600 million. Those are really stupid odds. That’s like you being mixed in with one tenth of all the humans on the planet and having your name pulled out of that huge hat. Really stupid odds. But then, we seem to be living in a really stupid time.