Shouting into the void

I mean since I am off social media (for the most part) so no one is reading this blog anymore. It is just my way of shouting into the void. Hope it doesn't shout back!

I was thoroughly disgusted to be an American on Friday. Well I have been disgusted for a good long time now, but this time it was accompanied by anger. What that fat orange fuck and his mewling sidekick did to President Zelensky on Friday was a disgrace. That a sitting US President would engage in a set-up attack like that in front of our nation and a Russian journalist (who got a spot a the presser over anyone from AP or Reuters) is almost beyond imagining. 

This is the administration's way of backing out of any aid for Ukraine against Russia going forward. It is what Putin wants pure and simple. These assholes won't even publicly acknowledge that this war started WHEN RUSSIA INVADED UKRAINE! They can't even bring themselves to say it. Because to actually say it would mean they would have to remove their lips from Putin's rear end for a moment.

We are now the enemy of the free world. There is no other way to look at it. We made President Zelensky stronger than ever to his European and Canadian allies. The photo from the summit meeting in London this weekend with no Americans in sight is the lasting image I will have of this despicable display. 

I work with a MAGA guy. I asked him what he thought. He sighed and said "well they both were wrong". I asked him exactly what did Zelensky do wrong in that meeting and he said "he had a terrible attitude". What kind of attitude was he supposed to portray when he was invited to the White House and almost immediately attacked? Because he refused to drop a knee and thank Dear Leader for his support? Which he doesn't have and never had, by the way. He has always been Putin's puppet. And even Vance voted against the last aid package to Ukraine when he was in Congress. So why should he thank them? He has thanked the US and all of his allies countless times. But that was during the previous administration...that's what these guys think. Doesn't count. 

I am done being nice. If you think what these fucks did on Friday in the Oval Office was good for America, then you are spitting on ideals of what once made this country great. Standing up to bullies and dictators whenever they rear their ugly heads. 

Politics, Religion and Family

My brother is visiting us, well our mother, this weekend. We are a large family. Six kids. My parents were old-school Democrats but Catholic so they had that whole anti-abortion thing going for them. Never stopped them from voting Democrat their entire lives. My four sisters and I are all lefties...some more radical than others. My brother is the lone right-wing MAGA uber-Christian in the family. Sent me a pic of him and his wife toasting the convicted felon on the TV on Inauguration Day. Threw up in my mouth a little at that, but I just said "Boo!" and moved on. 

We are all getting together on Saturday with Mom and we will all dance around the subject of politics and how much our country is a heaping pile of trash these days. He Who Shall Not Be Named....well, he will not be named. At least by any of us. Sometimes he can't help himself. And if he does...boy howdy do I have a whole speech prepared in my head about the hypocrisy of Christians who support mass deportations, concentration camps, racism, corruption, fraud, convicted felons, insurrection and a host of other evils. Pro-Life, but only for fetuses. Fuck everyone after they are born, amirite?

Wish me luck? I guess?

Quid Pro Quo. I tell you things, you tell me things.

Uttered by the late great Hannibal Lecter in "Silence of the Lambs" A thoroughly evil man of great intelligence. Who never actually existed, by the way. 

Now we have our own version starring two thoroughly evil men of diminished intelligence. New York City Mayor Eric Adams and Felon-in-Chief Donald Trump. Last fall, Adams was indicted on multiple felony charges. He is a corrupt as hell dude who took money from foreign interests. Bribery, corruption, fraud...he is a man after Dear Leader's cold, cold heart. And as such, Derp Fuhrer has found a way to benefit from the situation. The DOJ, under Trump's direction, has instructed the US Attorney in NYC to drop the charges against Adams in a not so subtle way of having Adams help Trump out with his mass immigration deportation policy. Adams would divert city resources to that effort. The late great Hannibal Lecter would be proud. 

Except a ray of sunshine in an utterly dismal world has suddenly appeared in the form of Acting US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Danielle Sassoon. She, by the way, was a Trump appointee during his first term and is a registered Republican. She was the one that received the order from the DOJ to drop the charges against Adams. But she said...nah, I will resign before I do that. Because she knows he is guilty as hell and the order from the DOJ demand was clearly a favor. She stated in a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi that the request was “inconsistent with my ability and duty to prosecute federal crimes without fear or favor and to advance good-faith arguments before the courts.” Good on her. But you know how these things go. She resigns and the next lackey-in-charge just tows the line and does what the administration wants them to do. 

Except not so fast there, bub! The DOJ accepted her resignation then suspended all of her deputies to investigate them for being...hard-working and honest public servants I guess. Then they moved the case from the US Attorney's office to the DOJ's Public Integrity Section. That will get them what they want, right? Wrong. The acting head of the Public Integrity Section also refused to dismiss the charges and resigned. Then it got moved to the DOJ's Criminal Division...whose acting head also refused to dismiss the charges and resigned. This is beautiful stuff right here. These three attorneys know that the decision to dismiss charges against Adams is corrupt as hell and they sure as hell know who and why the order was sent down. It is Adams's not-so-slow turn from corrupt Democrat to corrupt MAGA-crat. 

And no one should bear witness to such corruption. Not in the United States I grew up. Just ask Richard Nixon, Archibald Cox, Elliot Richardson or anyone involved in the infamous Saturday Night Massacre regarding the Watergate scandal. This was the turning point in that investigation. Nixon was clearly seen as trying to obstruct justice...just like Trump is doing here...and he resigned in shame before being impeached. 

Do I sense a similar outcome here? Nah. Convicted Felon Donald Trump has already been impeached (twice!) and was just elected a second time even though he is one of the most corrupt men in the entire fucking world. He is gonna continue destroying democracy in America, just like half of this country seemingly wanted when they elected to him. He may even find a way to run for a third term...because he just does what he wants and Congress and the Supreme Court are firmly in the pocket of his cadre of evil billionaires. 

But I will enjoy this brief ray of sunshine while it lasts.

Addendum: Even as I was writing this, an AUSA for the Southern District of New York named Hagan Scotten (a former clerk for Chief Justice Roberts!) has also resigned over this. In his resignation letter he wrote "If no lawyer within earshot of the President is willing to give him that advice, then I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool, or enough of a coward, to file your motion. But it was never going to be me."  Fuck and yeah!!!!

Dusting off the old blog. Maybe

Whelp...it has been...holy shit! Nine years since I last posted something here. And yes, it is actually me and not someone who stole my account or anything. How can I prove that? Well if my nemesis Slyde posts a comment, we will get into our normal harmless fighting/sexplay that we always do. Told you it was me. Why am I coming back to Blogger? Simple, I have deleted several social media accounts that I used to post very infrequently on. Twitter and Facebook. Why did I delete them? Again simple, I don't like the owners of those companies and I am choosing not to support them by using their products. OK...I am still temporarily on Instagram which is owned by Zuck, but that may be going the wayside soon as well. So buckle up, kiddos. I'm back. Maybe.

Magic Man, part Duh

Saw a post from one of my old blog buddies the other day, lamenting the disappearance of our rather unique crowd. Not from the planet, just from the blogosphere. Got me to thinking about doing some blogging again. But nope...I had nothing.

Then yesterday, something truly odd happened. Harkens back to something I wrote last year about weird coincidences that seem to happen to me all the time.

I was at work with a friend shot me an email with the following link late in the afternoon:

http://www.abevigoda.com/

You all know by now that Abe Vigoda passed away yesterday. The running joke, at least on that site, is that is just seemed near impossible that Abe Vigoda was still alive. He was ancient back in the 1970's, or so it seemed. So someone created that website as a joke, and a pretty funny one. Until he died yesterday, that is.

Anyway, I have done a baseball radio show/podcast thing with that same friend and we have recently become interested in doing them again. We had a show two Sundays ago and it looks like we are doing another one this Sunday. Just Talking to the Cornfield, if you are interested.  So I've been listening to old shows on my rides to and from work lately. Just to get in the groove. So before I left work, I downloaded several episodes onto my phone so I could listen on my car's radio on the hour and a half ride home (yup).

When I turned on the car, there was a replay of that morning's Opie and Jim Norton show on XM Radio. They were talking about Mason Reese, the child actor that shilled for Underwood's Deviled Ham. You know, the smorgasbord commercials. If you remember the 1970's at all, then you will remember Mason Reese. Well, I turned it off and turned on one of the random episodes that I downloaded. It was from 2012 and it was titled "Smorgasbord". Already I'm weirded out.

We started the show talking about Mason Reese and those commercials, and that's really fucking strange. But about five minutes later it got even stranger. I threw out a random quote from Joe Versus the Volcano, something about a luggage situation. I said that it was an important film, if only to remind us that Abe Vigoda was still alive. I then proceeded to tell my friend about that website up there. The one that you could click to get Abe Vigoda's life status. He laughed for five minutes about that.

So...a half-hour earlier, my friend emails me that link after hearing the news that Abe Vigoda died. Then a half-hour later I'm listening back the exact moment 4 years ago that I told him about that site in the first place!!! Sandwiched in there is the odd coincidence of Opie and Jim talking about Mason Reese directly before I hear us talking about Mason Reese on that same show we recorded 4 years ago. That I randomly downloaded onto my phone yesterday.

Folks...this is getting fucking weird!

The Big England Post (Days 1-5)

We've been back from the UK for about a week and a half now. Maybe time to post some pics? Sure.

Day Zero

With newly acquired passport in hand (yes...never had one before), a friend of ours was kind enough to drive us to JFK at 7PM on a Wednesday night so that we could catch our 10:50PM flight to London, Gatwick. I had hurt my back a couple of days prior doing yard work, so the thought of an overnight flight to England wasn't exactly thrilling to me. But I soldiered on. That's going to be a theme to for the rest of the trip. Not giving my back the proper time to rest, but soldiering on.

Having a cocktail at the lounge at JFK prior to leaving for England

Day One - London

We landed at Gatwick around 9AM local time. By the time we went through customs, gathered our luggage and took the Gatwick Express over to Victoria Station and our hotel, it was probably a little after Noon. But our room was ready and I was ready for a shower and a long nap since neither of us slept a wink on our overnight flight. Exciting, right? First day in a foreign land and all we could think about was a nap. But I made sure we woke up after a few hours and hit the town. We only had one night in London, and we were still tired. So we decided to just hit a few local pubs and have some food.

First pint of bitter at The Jugged Hare.

A five minute walk from our hotel found us at a joint called The Jugged Hare. We grabbed a couple of quick pints and headed out to the courtyard as it was a beautiful evening. See that wee man over Gia's shoulder? His name was Leigh and we wound up getting pissed with him and his buddy. Great guys and our first found English friends. We had to pry ourselves away from them because we were REALLY hungry and they wanted to keep drinking...hard. Normally, I'd be in, but food and a bed were calling to me.

However...

More pints!

This would be a recurring theme. On our way to find food, we found another glorious pub called The Queen's Arms. Nice place and really nice people. But it was starting to get late, we had to get up early to catch our train to Northampton and we STILL hadn't eaten. It was after 11PM at this point so there wasn't much open in the way of non-fast food, but somehow we did find a nice restaurant (the name escapes me) that was still serving. A wonderful meal of roasted chicken and chips was more than sufficient for these two weary travelers. And I was able to figure out how to get back to the hotel all by my tipsy self.

Day Two-Day Four - Northampton

I woke up early to do a bit of a currency exchange. Took me a while to figure out the exchange rates (ripoff) and the best place to make an exchange. Our hotel clerk told us to go to a bookie, but nope...I've seen that movie too many times. By the time I got back to the hotel, we were ready to hit a cab over to Euston Station to catch our train to Northampton to meet up with our friends. Oh yeah...our friends. That was the reason for our trip in the first place. They had asked Gia to be the godmother of their daughter. Pretty cool.

It was still early and we hadn't had breakfast, and we weren't going to because our train was on the platform. It was a fairly quick ride up to Northampton. An hour...an hour and a half maybe? I do know this...the rail ads in the UK are much harsher than those here in the States.

Yes you are.

Northampton is an old city with lots of interesting history, but you can read about all that crap on your own. The economy of the area doesn't seem great, but several depressed areas seem to be in the midst of an urban renewal period. Our friend Adam met us at the rail station and it was a quick walk to our hotel. Not a real glamorous joint, but it was clean, relatively inexpensive and very central to walking everywhere we needed to go while in town. Gemma and their daughter Daisy met us at the hotel and the five us light out into town for a quick bite to eat. You know what, lemme just hit you with a bunch of pictures that highlight our time in Northampton.

All Saint's Church...it's a church AND a bistro!

Fried gherkins at The Mail Coach

Just a random street shot of estate agents

Gia, representing the Yankees and enjoying an Earl Grey tea

English Breakfast (first version) at some joint.

The gang, post-baptism.

Delicious cuppa

See? It's a bistro too!

The altar at The All Saint's Church

Beautiful domed ceiling at The All Saint's Church

Pipes!

The baptism was in this old church in the center of town. Most of the town burned down in a The Great Fire of Northampton in 1675, so it all had to be rebuilt shortly after that. Still very old by our standards, but it would have been pretty cool to see what it looked like before the fire. We spent three days visiting with our friends, hanging around the local pubs, having cappucino, English Breakfast and generally taking it easy. I even made dinner for the five of us one night and we just had a wonderful time visiting with our friends/new family.

Day Five - Brighton, uh...Northampton again

We had arranged to pick up a rental car on Monday morning and then take the whole gang down to Brighton for a day and night. We had a hotel booked right on the water in Brighton with two rooms and it was going to be an adventure.

It wasn't meant to be. We got to the car rental agency and found that it was closed due to a national holiday that we didn't know about. How could we? We had a reservation to pick up the car! Our friends told us about the holiday, but since we had made a reservation for that day we assumed, falsely, that it would be open. It wasn't. Nor were any other car rental agencies. After trying to figure out the rail situation to get four adults and an infant from Northampton to Brighton for a day...well, we decided to bail and stay in Northampton for another night. It just would have been too complicated to do it any other way. So we lost out on our room fee in Brighton, but we probably broke even considering the car rental and how inexpensive it was to stay in Northampton.

We were bummed, but we decided to turn lemons into lemonade. Gemma told us she would cook dinner for us so the family went out to do some shopping while Gia and I went back to our favorite pub in town called The Wig and Pen.

Representing our local pub, Nicky's, overseas

Me. Everywhere we went.

Emmental and ham sandwich, cheesy chips in background

Bacon, brie and cranberries. The bacon was cooked better than it appears in the shows in the photo

Let me give you my quick Top Three Pubs in Northampton:

1. The Wig and Pen.
2. The Mail Coach
3. The Lamplighter

The Wig and Pen was so much fun and we went back there several times. Great old appearance, even though we aren't sure how old it actually is. But fun at night and quiet during the day. Perfect pub. The Mail Coach was much newer, both in perception and decor. We went there every day as well. And they had a nice garden out back, actually most pubs seemed to have one of those. But it was good for Adam, Gemma and Daisy to meet us there as Daisy could run around a bit. The food there was fantastic too. And one of the bartenders was American! Weird. The Lamplighter was a little solo quest of mine. I had heard great things so I decided to explore one evening when I had an hour to myself. The walk over was bit dodgy through a depressed neighborhood, but the pub was filled with both the well-to-do and what we would call hipsters over here. And they were having a cask ale festival to boot! Nice joint.

As I said, that evening Gemma made us a delicious home cooked meal and we drank whiskey and ales and watched Arthur, because that's Gia's favorite thing to do. Introduce one of her favorite films with a new crowd. We had a blast!

All in all, a wonderful time. But the more hectic portion of our travels would begin the next morning as we would rent a car and head to the English countryside to stay at one of those classic country inns in the Cotswalds and then back to London for several days.

Details to follow soon...

PS - I tried not to post many photos of Gia or myself or our friends/family. I took a bunch, but I've just never been that comfortable with sharing others photos here on this blog. So just a few to let you know we actually were there. Hehehe...

Magic Man

Do you ever think of a person and suddenly they text or call you?

Or have a movie on your mind when you are flipping through the channels only to find that it just started on some cable station?

Stuff like this happens to me all the time. Not exactly those things, but stuff like them. In fact, I only have one specific "ability" when it comes to predicting silly, meaningless shit. Songs on the radio. I'll often be thinking of a song when all of a sudden it appears out of nowhere on whatever Sirius XM Radio station that I'm listening to at that moment. That happens to me all the time. ALL. THE. TIME.

But something happened the other day that truly freaked me out. I was thinking of a Sonic Youth song from their 1988 album Daydream Nation. The song, Teenage Riot, was the first single and probably the biggest hit for them off of that album. That's not saying much. I probably had never heard the song on the radio at any time, even in the early 90's when Sonic Youth was a bit of an "it" band. And if you are a fan of the band, you would definitely know it as a big moment in their career.

I became a fan of Sonic Youth a year or so later when their album Goo came out, and I immediately went and picked up the earlier albums. That's when I first heard Teenage Riot and I fell in love with it. I was a fan of the band and that scene prior to hearing that song, but I became obsessed shortly thereafter. It shaped my musical taste for the better part of a decade. Hugely important song in my life.

Yet, I had never heard it on the radio. Not even once. Until Friday.

I was thinking about how much the station Lithium on Sirius/XM Radio both rules and sucks at the same time. It rules because they play all that music that I was obsessed with during that decade. It sucks because they only play the mega-hits. If they play Nirvana, it's Heart-Shaped Box when it could be Love Buzz. If they play The Pixies, it's Here Comes Your Man when it could be Cactus. And when they really dig deep and play Sonic Youth, it's always Kool Thing. Always. And that's a great fucking song, but it's literally the only Sonic Youth they ever play.

I was thinking how great it would be if they would play a song like Teenage Riot for once. Just once. And I was thinking about how much I love that song and what it meant to me over the years. I sat there listening to the radio, just getting pissed about all of that.

So I turned the station to Pearl Jam Radio...and Teen Age Riot had just started.

SEE?

How the fuck does something like that happen at that exact moment?