The Inmates Are Running the Asylum

The title reflects one of my favorite sayings these days and it's so true.

Here we have the alleged President of the United State routinely speaking falsehoods under the guise of daily briefings, which we all know are just replacements for his rallies we taxpayers fund in myriad ways. The true experts in the Administration are either muzzled or fired outright.

And Trump's base, those God-fearing covidiots are getting louder and more kinetic in their protests, many of whom are now threatening store clerks who are just doing their jobs to enforce social distancing.

Imagine going to a Costco, standing in line for hours, only to be shot by some maniac with a semi-automatic rifle because he wasn't able to get into the store when he wanted to. It could likely happen. Hell, there have been mass shootings for less "justification" than that.

In our little community, the right-wing, Trump-loving lunatics are getting more and more boisterous in their demand that all the amenities we have here open up no matter what the Governor's orders are.

We're seeing here (and in other parts of the country) citizens going head to head with cops, spraying their COVID-19 breath everywhere, demanding to have their freedoms "restored." There are also some county law enforcement officials who declare they will not enforce the social distancing orders and there work for the damn state!

My wife and I have talked about moving out of here to be closer to our families. We actually had a loose timetable to do this since we visited them last year. But because of the novel coronavirus, our plans are on hold. We have no idea when we'll be able to travel to look at a new home, let alone get everything all ready to move.

So, my wife had enough today when we saw on Nextdoor.com veiled threats from some members toward the vocal liberals among us. It was disturbing enough. Check this one:

This kind of thing is more than discouraging. Considering how these people love their guns here, is it that out of the realm of possibility that someone will step up the assault and shoot one of us? So we're stuck here until we'll be able to travel freely again. Until then, we just have to remain vigilant.

Yours from the nuthouse,

Michae.

The problem with committing to writing a blog every day is you sometimes have nothing noteworthy to discuss, at least something that will fill a short article space. Sure, I can rant on about the latest stupid thing that Trump and his minions did, but that gets old. Every day is a new insult to our country and to analyze every single one of those instances is better left to the journalists.


So, here's a brief list of things on my mind this day.

SNL At Home

Have you had a chance to watch the two episodes of SNL produced all from within the cast's homes? Despite the lack of a studio audience, it's been pretty inspired comedy. It demonstrates the professionalism of those involved with the product, from the writers all the way to the video editors and everyone in between.


I've been a fan of SNL since it first aired back in the 70s. I was in high school then and I thought their comedy was edgy and a bit dangerous, as compared to the way TV was back then. Over the years, the quality came and went, but I hung in there as so many fans did.


Sure, their episodes are uneven. Some skits are funny as hell, others are just bombs. Sketch comedy is a brutal business and the way SNL's process seems to lend itself to disasters sometimes.


To be able to see new episodes in this stay-at-home format really has increased my appreciation for what they do. Bravo, Lorne Michaels and the entire team!

Nextdoor.com

I've already ranted about the people using this platform in our neighborhood but their complaints have grown both more strident and more ridiculous since I began posting there regularly.


The number of in-house epidemiologists we have here is simply astounding! These self-described experts (really covidiots) cite their sources as some idiot they saw on Fox News or some You-tube video they saw. They attack the true medical experts like Fauci, even questioning his motives, his background, and everything else.


Yet, these same morons think that everything that spills from Trump's lips is like words from the Lord himself. Talk about a bunch of delusional twits.


And the complaints? Don't get me started. Besides the constant whining about the amenities still being closed, they bitch they're "rights" are being taken away because they post stupid and misleading stuff on Nextdoor, and then the posts are removed.


The First Amendment's intention was to prevent the government from abridging the right to free speech. It was not written to allow anyone to write/say anything on any platform completely unfettered. NextDoor.com isn't run by the government; users must follow the guidelines prescribed by the moderators. The same goes for Twitter and all other social media.

Hot Peppers

Do you like spicy food? I mean really like spicy food? I do. And having grown up in a household of pepper-eaters (my mother's Italian), I grew up eating the stuff, the hotter the better.


When I met my wife, she wasn't a big fan of spicy food but over the years, she's learned to love it almost as much as I do. Every once in a while we buy chilis japones, those hot red peppers you get in kung pao style food at Chinese restaurants. We fry them up in vegetable oil until they just a little crisp and then put the result in a glass bowl with a spoon, where we apply it to any/all food we eat.


Without getting graphic, of course there's the natural digestive result that comes with eating hot food. But anyone who loves the burning going down to the point of an addiction tolerates the results with a modicum of acceptance. Even when it hurts, you still crave more.


I won't admit to the number of hot chili sauces I have in our refrigerator, either. Just know I regularly have to replace empty bottles of the stuff.


Yours in miscellanea,


Michael

May Day 2020

Is the year over with yet? The decade?

Today as I look out at this bifurcated country we live in, I wonder how the hell the United States can continue to survive intact. Of course, in large part, I'm referring to the political polarization that both sides of the divide engage in.

Sure, I could trot out the well-worn platitudes honed from years of cable news coverage, but we're not talking with each other--instead, we're talking at each other, which never bodes well for the future of a unified nation.

But I'm not going to do that.

Instead, I'll point to the more dangerous schism than right vs. left. It's the crazies vs. the sane people and I fear the former are taking over (that is, the inmates are running the asylum).

Case in point...the ongoing "freedom marches" being held across the country by covidiots who want their state governments to reopen the state immediately despite what the experts are saying about opening too early and inviting a resurgence of COVID-19.

It's not just those that are marching that bothers me. I've already written that they get themselves sick, they can infect the rest of us, overwhelm the healthcare system, invite an even further extended quarantine, etc. These people live in a world where Fox News tells them what they should think and do. Morons, one and all.

No, the ones I'm really fearful of are those who propose absolutely unscientific, ill-advised, and just plain batty theories about novel coronavirus. Some examples:

• The virus is a hoax perpetrated by [fill in the name of your least favorite liberal]
• Bill Gates wants to control us with all with his vaccine
• This is how the liberals will take away citizens' guns
• 5G technology is responsible for COVID-19
• The virus was manufactured in a Chinese lab as a bioweapon & it got away from them
• The world is conspiring to get rid of Trump
• People aren't dying, they're crisis actors we're seeing
• Hospitals aren't being overrun, it's all fake news

How the hell do these people dress themselves every day? Something tells me they have a screw or ten loose.

With the internet, these whack jobs now have the way to join forces and enlist other brain-dead souls to their way of thinking.

You may be asking what does this rant have to do with May Day?

May Day was once celebrated in Soviet Russia (and still is, to some degree) in honor of the working class on whom the Russians built their communist world and of whom were taken advantage of by the Communist Party elites. It equates to a much lesser degree to our Labor Day.

The fact that on this May Day workers are demanding to be allowed back to work is, of course, a noble thing. I don't fault people for wanting to get back to making money. Too many folks are in a financial bind and being furloughed without pay is making it impossible to meet their expenses.

But when you see covidiots bringing semi-automatic weapons to these demonstrations or seeing anger toward a made-up enemy (George Soros, for example) makes me wonder if they have any sense God gave pocket list.

(Actually, I don't wonder, I know they don't).

Meanwhile, and this is true, Georgia, which flung open their doors wide a few days ago, has already reported a surge in COVID-19 cases since their grand reopening.

Of course, they did. Any wonder?

Yours in confusion,

Michael

Fitness Update

In an earlier post, I mentioned I started a yoga program using an iPhone app called Sunsa. This app offers free programs, using real yoga instructors who take you on a routine that ranges from 10 to 26 minutes.

As of yesterday, I completed my first full program (for beginners of course). The entire journey was twenty-eight days long. I only missed one day, thanks to one of our long retail shopping days.

Here is the review of the app and my overall personal experience.

The app itself is truly wonderful. The instructors are very fluid in their movements. The narrator has a soothing voice that accompanies the gentle music that plays in the background. While some reviews indicated that they would've preferred getting to see each pose with its name individually so they would recognize them, anything I needed to learn, I found out about on Google. All in all, I give the app five stars out of five.

As far as my overall personal experience, I can truly say the last 28 days have been transformative--mentally, spiritually, and physically. While I did experience pain early on (leading me to purchase Joint Juice, a glucosamine-chondroitin drink), I am pain-free as of this writing.

My flexibility, which wasn't too bad to start with for a sixty-year-old man, has improved quite a bit. I find myself looking forward to my daily yoga sessions and feel very cleanses when I complete them. In fact, I employ some yoga poses during the day, too, just to center myself.

I now have to decide whether to go further in my studies or stay with what I've done to date. As of today, I decided to start from the beginning of my program and add a few additional poses on my own in conjunction with the push-ups, sit-ups, and planks I already do twice a day.

The only cardio workout we're getting is walking outside. Most days, we're getting three or more miles done. While it's not my preferred aerobic exercise, it works for now considering we won't be able to get into our gym until at least May 12th (Arizona's "reopening" date) and probably longer than that. As I told my wife yesterday, I would want to wait it out for another 3 weeks to see if we have a resurgence of the virus before going back.

Yours in health,

Michael

When Will It Be Normal Again?

If you've been reading all the COVID-19 coverage online or watching cable news, you must've seen a title of an article or segment that opines about when will we be normal again? As if "normal" is the same for everyone, but I get the point. Let me start with the answer, then the analysis.

When will we be normal again? Never.

Seriously, never. Or at least never in our lifetime, though a lot of people will eventually return to some variation of their previous "normal." But, unless your head is completely full of air or rocks, you must know that if a pandemic like this could happen and it's not that fatal, imagine one where it is not only virulent but kills a large number of those who become infected.

So, we have to accept the fact that there will be a new normal but even how that will look is hard to predict.

Think about dining out in a restaurant. How many do you go to that are packed cheek to jowl with tables and customers and waitstaff? Probably too many to count, right? If you were the owner, how would you reconfigure it?

Here's what I would do:

• Reservations-only seating
• Staff must be checked daily for temperature and perhaps O2 levels
• Customers must be checked for temperature and O2 levels as well
• While in the restaurant, waitstaff must wear masks and surgical gloves (same for kitchen staff, too)
• Remove half the tables or more to allow for 6' minimum social distancing
• Tables, chairs, and other surfaces need to be wiped down thoroughly after each customer leaves

And even this isn't perfect. What if an asymptomatic person comes into the restaurant? No fever, O2 saturation levels are fine, but they're shedding viruses left and right--how do you prevent this? Sure, on-the-spot testing would help, but even if it was available, who could afford to do that every day for every person passing through the doors?

This is just one example. Think of your own and then you start to see the sheer magnitude that this challenge presents.

So "normal," as we used to know if, is history. What happens going forward is up to us as a race because just returning to our old ways will only open the doors for the same kind of pandemic or even worse--the one that will take out humanity altogether.

And what's the most asinine thing I see now are the covidiots protesting that their liberties are being assaulted. My only words to them are these: get with the program or get ready to lose you life or that of your loved one.

Yours in quarantine,

Michael

Tales from the Loop

As I've noted multiple times in this blog, we've been watching new series as we learn about them from our son or from the internet. After weeks of action movies, we've decided to change the mood a bit and began watching Tales from the Loop, an 8-episode series on Amazon Prime that falls in the realm of surrealistic sci-fi (perhaps a redundant term).


Based on the eerie paintings of 36-year-old Swedish artist Simon Stålenhag, the series explores the lives of residents of Mercer, Ohio, a company town where the "industry" is a device called The Loop that is built underground. From all appearances, The Loop is a particle accelerator and the question viewers will consider is whether the strange happenings a result of the device itself or merely an adjunct of a town filled with engineers and scientists.


But that's only the backdrop. The town itself is drab, but the lives of those living there can hardly be described as such. Though we've only watched three episodes thus far, it seems like each episode, though standalone, feature characters that are interconnected linearly from one episode to the next. Certainly, it's not a movie series in the traditional sense.


On the plus side, the cinematography is beautiful, the soundtrack is tight, and the writing is beyond skilled. Figures and structures in Stålenhag's paintings are faithfully reproduced and integrated with the entire story. Whether some of it is CGI or not (I respective it is, though), it's still quite stunning.


On the minus side, it's very slow. If you're used to your series jump-cutting here and there, lots of car crashes, bullets, and bombs, then you may not really enjoy this series so much. However, if you're looking for a more cerebral viewing experience, I say it's worth a try.


The good news is, according to the showrunner, there is enough material for future seasons of Tales from the Loop, though right now, there's no word whether Amazon's interested in renewing the contract. So much in the air right now with impacts from COVID-19, we'll just have to wait and see.


Yours from the Loop,


Michael

Nextdoor.com Exposed!

As I believe I mentioned in previous posts, I belong to NextDoor.com for our local neighborhood. This is a website that allows residents in particular neighborhoods to interact online. There's the usual run of things posted, like items for sale, groups forming, questions about service providers, and the rest. Nothing earth-shattering.

Then there are discussions on other topics of supposed public interest others to participate in and enjoy. Because we live in a very red district in a red (almost purple) state, many of the posts tend toward the political, and they are pro-Trump to the max.

And woe to anyone who dares to offer a contrary opinion! In fact, the MAGA crowd infiltrates discussions started by non-Trumpers and tries to bully everyone into submission with their idiotic Fox News talking points.

This behavior has recently led to the liberal among us to start our own subgroup where we can share our frustrations and disgust with the orange-tinged maniac in the White House. This forum has been a source of relief from reading the threads in the public space.

Of course, these days, the biggest topic of discussion is the anger at the ongoing stay-at-home orders, especially when it comes to restrictions on the use of the common facilities here such as the swimming pool and sports courts.

The management here is strictly adhering to Republican Governor Doug Ducey's restrictions on the entire state, but that doesn't matter to the MAGAts around here. They complain ad nauseam about how unfair it is, it's government overreach, our liberties are being trampled, and all the rest of the BS the right is spewing right now.

The unavailability of the public pool here seems to tweak these crotchety old farts the most, though. They don't swim. They soak and chat. It's where cliques of friends gather together and gossip about other cliques. It's just like high school. Very few of them actually swim.

They're all upset because they can't meet with their tribe at the (literal) watering hole. It's beyond laughable reading the complaints tumbling forth (with misspellings and poor grammar, by the way). There are a few notables who truly love hearing themselves "talk." One woman has started two, maybe three separate threads on the pool and she doesn't even use it (by her own admission)!

I swear, I'll never live in an "active senior living community again." I may be sixty, but my mind isn't old and dusty like these folks, and God willing, will never be.

Yours in amusement,

Michael

Bloody Hot

We made the decision to move from the Los Angeles metro area back in 2013 after both my wife and I had suffered through some serious illnesses. Our thought was simple: life's too damn short to spend it working our asses off to pay bills, especially a huge mortgage which, if you ask anybody, is the only kind of mortgage you can get because houses are so damn expenses.

Despite the fact we knew we'd miss Southern California, it turned out to be a smart choice, at least from an economic perspective. The cost of living in California continued to rise in the interposing years since our move. Mounting expenses grew at a much higher rate than income in the same period...basically, a no-win situation.

I had another reason for not wanting to move. Not being close to the "film capital of the world" while I had so many scripts in progress (and in the hopper, so to speak) meant I would be getting out of the game when I hadn't even gotten a chance to make a name for myself in the entertainment business.

Anyway, we had been looking at the Phoenix area for years as the place to retire because the cost of housing and living, in general, is about a third less than Los Angeles. We merely accelerated the timeline by ten years. No biggie.

One thing everyone knows about Phoenix is it's hot as hell during the summer. I'm talking triple-digits-for-weeks-on-end kind of hot. What they don't tell you the heat doesn't dissipate much at night. You can still have 100+ heat at mostly any time of day. But we were naive at the time and figured the similarity in weather between California and Arizona would be acceptable.

It's not. Trust me.

Without relief for such a long period, year-round residents basically shelter in place, only venturing out when necessary. Either that or you travel out of the state for a couple of months--just to escape. Of course, California is a popular destination spot for Arizonans (particularly San Diego). Others, go to Utah and other ski resort areas to take advantage of the lower summer rates.

So, when we saw on the TV weather report that we're about to hit our first triple-digit days, we were dismayed beyond belief. With temps in the 90s this week (as a ramp-up to the 100+ days to come this weekend), we've already shifted our walking time to the morning.

But what will happen when it's too hot for even early in the morning, which is always the case? Without a gym to go to, we're going to have to get creative in ways to get our cardio in.

The problem? We have no ideas right now.

Yours in confusion,

Michael

General Miscellanea

Sometimes I don't have a particular topic I want to discuss, so I'll fill this space with news bits and pieces, or as Stephen Colbert refers to a segment on his show, "Meanwhile."

Meanwhile...

We already finished season 6 of Bosch and it was every bit as good as the first five seasons. The downside of binge-watching, of course, is we have to wait another year, or maybe even longer now that filming is on hiatus, for season 7. I have to satisfy my Connelly cravings with the few remaining ebooks of his I haven't read (though none of them are about Harry Bosch).

Meanwhile...

We're going out shopping today after being home for a little over two weeks now. Running low on fresh produce and some other staples, as well as things we can live without, but we'll get while we're forced to be in the grocery stores. Of course, we'll be wearing masks and surgical gloves in our travels. Wish us luck--I hope we don't run into any covidiots while we're out.

Meanwhile...

The price of oil went negative for the first time ever yesterday. With that, investors are saying May is shot as far as manufacturing is concerned, though futures beyond that look hopeful. It's impossible to imagine that the price of oil -- not gas -- would get so low considering the oil shortages of the 1970s. Still, we don't plan to do any driving anytime soon.

Meanwhile...

We're about to hit our first triple-digit temperature days in the next week. What this will do for our daily exercise remains to be seen. We're not morning people and to shift our internal clocks to earlier than what they are now won't be easy. I don't want to be like stereotypical seniors generally are, up at dawn, in bed at dusk. Just because I'm sixty doesn't mean I have to act my age.

Meanwhile...

I'm getting a lot of reading and writing done during this long period of self-isolation. I have a 50-book target to read this year and I'm a little under halfway there already. My writing goals are a little looser. So far, I've finished five screenplays this year and I have two in progress as of this moment. I'm also in the middle of writing two novels and what I think will be a novella, though I'm not limiting that in case it wants to be longer.

Yours in miscellanea,

Michael

The Return of Bosch

For many years now, long before the Kindle and other e-readers, I began reading books on mobile devices. My go-to device back them was the venerable Palm Pilot and the books I downloaded were plain text classics from some long-forgotten source.

Since then, I've upgraded my reading devices to Kindles and iPhones and iPad, each one making the reading experience more enjoyable and certainly easier on the eyes than that little gray screen with the dark letter gave me! Along the way, I picked up audiobooks from Audible.com and read those when I would go to the gym or was doing some other mindless task, like doing housework -- in fact, I still do.

When I read (which is often, as you can see), I tend to gravitate toward thrillers, the more complex, the better. I began reading Lee Child's Jack Reacher books, first from Audible, and then (as luck would have it) via an app called Overdrive, which was eventually replaced with its improved app Libby. These two apps allow one to add one or more library cards to gain access to those libraries' digital content, both e-books and audiobooks.

Thankfully, all of the Jack Reacher books save for a couple were accessible to me this way. I listened to his entire series via the Libby app and only shifted to e-book format when I couldn't find them in the former format.

Looking for new authors of a similar caliber, I asked my uncle, another lover of thrillers, for his suggested. One of his top favorites is Michael Connelly, who has written a large number of books featuring (in most cases) the exploits of Harry Bosch, LAPD detective and general badass.

Like the Reacher books, I listened to every audiobook I could get of the Bosch series and only shifted to ebook format when I ran out of options. I'm still reading them as of this writing.

When I found out that Bosch was made into a series on Amazon Prime, I was, well, thrilled. Surprisingly, my wife was into it as much as I was and we binge-watched all five seasons, usually three or four episodes a night.

I'm happy to report that season 6 of Bosch has been released. Last night, we watched the first three of ten episodes, and the acting, directing, writing, and cinematography is as brilliant as the first five seasons were. What a treat!

And the best news of all... Amazon is in development of a Reacher series based on the Lee Child books. The only challenge, unfortunately, is that the COVID-19 outbreak could very well delay any further progress because of filming concerns. We'll see if this is true or not in the coming months.

Until then, I'll continue reading my thrillers and finding new authors. Steve Berry's Cotton Malone character is interesting...

How Late-Night TV Has Changed

Unless you've been living like a prepper for years, all that we're going through is brand new to us, thanks to COVID-19 and our government's piss-poor response to it. After more than a month in self-isolation, it's easy to see why some are going a bit squirrelly. I do not and will not believe this should be cause for jumping the gun on "reopening the country" (a stupid term, if you ask me).

But I digress (which is easy to do in a blog where you're the only reader)...

Among the many changes we've seen is the face, literally and figuratively, of late-night TV. Whether you're a fan of Stephen Colbert or Jimmy Fallon or Jimmy Kimmel, you've seen how they have shifted to a home-studio format instead of airing repeats.

We're Colbert people here. Stephen's show (The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, aka LSSC) is taped in HD in a very sparsely decorated room. His family lends a hand as his in-house production crew and they work in conjunction with the mothership back at CBS studios.

Colbert's musical director, the incomparable John Baptiste, is the only member of his band that plays on the show from his own house (in New Orleans, I think). Contrast this with Seth Meyers' show that follows Fallon's, where he has his much smaller band playing from their individual homes together. Stay Human, Baptiste's band, is too large to accomplish such a task.

It's not just the look of the LSSC that's changed, it's the entire vibe and I think that goes for the other shows. No live audience (and no laugh track, thank God), has been a definite drain on the energy Stephen exudes. He freely admits he gets his juice from the interaction with those in the studio. Without that, his show, while still funny, lacks in that buzz.

The most surprising things to note are the much more frank and free-spirited interviews with celebrities, also broadcasting in their homes (sometimes in their PJs) and the stark, but haunting, performances from some very talented people. My favorite of the later was a solo piece by Michael Stipe, formerly of R.E.M.

When things return to normal -- and they will -- I think I will miss this new format of late-night talk shows. Unlike cable news where a good background, audio, and video can make it seem like a news anchor is speaking from a studio, the late-night hosts can't hide behind such tricks. Talent steps forward while the talentless disappear.

Yours in late-night,
Michael

Sadly, Snowbirds Are Grounded Right Now

I live in a community where about 30-40% of the residents are snowbirds from other parts of the US (mostly states like Michigan, Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin, Washington, and Oregon), as well as Canada. This would normally be the time where they would all be flocking back to their primary homes, but this pandemic has forced many, if not all, of them to remain here in Arizona.

As I've mentioned in past posts, we don't interact with our neighbors except for a passing wave if we cross paths. There are various social clubs here, though right now, they're all on hiatus as far as we know. We don't belong to any of them; we're not joiners.

Normally, we secretly root for the snowbirds to go home so restaurants can return to normal, grocery stores won't be so crowded, and traffic will calm down. Except for the restaurant, their extended stay may impact us longer than normal.

Our grocery stores, still depleted of key items a month after the crazy hoarding began, could possibly keep up with the demand from the summer population, but with part-time residents remaining here, they will remain under pressure for the foreseeable future.

I've seen posts by these folks on Nextdoor.com, lamenting about being forced to maintain social distancing and not having their normal lifestyles maintained. After all, why are we paying HOA fees if we can't have access to all the amenities?

I wish I could elicit some sympathy for them, but those of us who live here year-round have to live with these amenities being shut down for long periods of time for repairs or traffic being impacted due to construction projects purposely scheduled for after snowbird season.

We have to live with the extreme heat, the monsoon winds, the hellacious storms, and until recently, the piles of tumbleweeds that would blow across the desert into the neighborhood. And we're not talking about a few of them, either. The first summer here, I piled up enough tumbleweeds to reach above our roofline.

Anyway, this is my own rant about the snowbirds' forced remainder and how we full-time residents have to accept them just as much as they have to accept remaining here despite their personal plans. Let's hope we get through this summer unscathed.

Two Binge-able, But Totally Different, Netflix Series

In the interests of full disclosure, I was a huge fan of The West Wing, though not during its first run. Years ago, I binge-watched the entire series in short order and loved every minute of it. I like books/movies about the inner workings of Washington, a place that both fascinates and terrifies me, depending on who's in office at the moment. All the wonky stuff intrigues me.

For similar reasons, I loved House of Cards, though I have yet to watch the last season because of the taint of the Kevin Spacey revelations. Or should I say, my wife's not interested for those reasons; frankly, I'd love to get closure, but eventually, I'll see it. After all, the disgraced actor isn't even in the final season.

But I digress...

We just finished watching two binge-worth, but oh, so different, series on Netflix.

The first--and hence my initial paragraphs--is Designated Survivor, starring Keifer Sutherland as the lone surviving member of the current Administration and newly sworn-in president. He is tasked with rebuilding the federal government (literally and figuratively), while at the same time dealing with all manner of threats typical for any president to face.

The first two episodes were aired on ABC and then was purchased by Netflix, who produced the third and final season (at least final for now). Unlike the West Wing, it has a lot of elements of a thriller interwoven into the day-to-day governmental folderol and shenanigans.

Sadly, the third season ends with a lot of open issues and no fourth season in sight. Regardless, most definitely worth your time.

The second series, the one everyone is talking about, is a seven-episode documentary called Tiger King. Talk about a wild ride and a peek into, let's be honest, the most red-necky parts of America. In short, the limited series traces the rise and ignominious fall of Joe Exotic, aka the Tiger King. Joe ran a zoo of sorts, featuring wild cats of all types, though mostly tigers.

This isn't one of your touchy-feely, "We bought a zoo" kind of shows. Instead, it reveals the seedy underbelly of the illegal big cat breeding and sale industry so rampant in this country. We meet a number of squirrelly characters, most of whom are really degenerates in their own ways. The big names in this underhanded business have oversized egos and oversized hunger for drugs, sex, booze, and guns.

I won't give spoilers, but let's say Joe gets what was coming to him and now he's pursuing a scorched earth policy. There's a lot more to the story than this series has shown. Stay tuned.

Yours in TV-land,

Michael

Easter Sunday & Social Distancing

I was raised a Roman Catholic and managed to live through eight years of parochial school relatively unscathed. I know how important a holiday Easter is in the Church. Unlike what many people believe, Christmas is not the holiest and most sacred day in the Church calendar--Easter is.

With that said, I understand the difficulty all Christians have faced this past Holy Week and today when told they would not be able to celebrate Easter in their respective houses of worship.

It's perfectly natural to grouse and complain about church doors being shuttered right now, I get that. But some of the comments I've read and some of the news I've seen really baffles me.

There are churches who have declared in no uncertain terms they will hold services today. I've read haughty promises by many Christians who promised they could defy stay-at-home orders no matter what.

I figure there are two reasons for such foolhardiness:

• Americans hate being told what to do, even at the risk of harming themselves or others
• Innate stubbornness or a mistaken belief that as long as they are worshipping, the Lord will protect them

Now, I'm going to challenge someone's faith. However, if your faith can directly or indirectly threaten the health of others, you are not behaving in a Christian manner. Do you think Jesus Christ would condone such a wanton act of irresponsibility? 

It's not like you're only harming yourself if you violate the self-isolation directives. If you are infected by the virus, you could unknowingly be spreading COVID-19 everywhere you go, including places the rest of us try to avoid until absolutely necessary.

The arrogance of some, specifically those on the right, to practice their faith in a manner they see fit no matter who they put at risk is criminal, in my opinion. We liberals aren't trying to destroy religion or inject our beliefs (or lack) into your world. We're trying to save people from dying unnecessarily.

It's funny...on Nextdoor.com for our community, a woman proudly posted that she was feeling perfectly fine and she's not going to heed the stay-at-home order, further stating that if anyone had a problem, they could kiss her a** (paraphrased). Of course, she was roundly trounced in the responses, which I took as a good sign.

Another man said he's been self-isolating for a month now (he never got the virus), so he feels it's been long enough, the virus must be long gone and he's obviously immune to it. That engenders even more derisive replies and for good reason--the guy had no idea what he was talking about.

In my less than humble opinion, all this happens when you refuse to put your faith in science in the same measure you put in a being you worship. Religion should never trump (ugh!) either scientific reasoning or common sense when it comes to the real aspects of life and the universe.

Just don't tell a Trumper that or their brains will explode.

Yours on Easter,

Michael

Christmas in April

No, I'm not talking about all the packages we're receiving in the mail these days, though it does make a difficult situation a bit more festive. In fact, when we get a delivery, we ask Alexa to play "The Wells Fargo Wagon" from The Music Man as we're wiping down the packages.

Yes, we're getting a bit loopy.

When I'm referring to Christmas here, I'm talking about screenplays. Now, I'm not of those people who look forward to the Hallmark Channel's "Christmas in July" promotion. In fact, I don't usually watch the station at all. It's not my jam, as the kids say.

But a few years ago, I wrote a holiday-themed screenplay (a comedy featuring kids) that I thought was pretty good, but like most of my scripts, I kept it in the virtual drawer, awaiting an opportunity to pitch it. A writer friend of mine had told me he was on the lookout for a live-action holiday film project as a producer friend of his was in the market for a made-for-TV film to pitch to studios like Hallmark.

Even though I had envisioned my project as a feature film for the theaters, I sent him my script. My friend liked it enough he ran it by his producer friend, who in turn liked it enough to tell him with some editing, it could be something he could use.

I readily agreed to make my friend a 50 percent partner in the project so we could tune it for the producer's needs. I won't go into the long, involved process to meet the requirements (that would entail a whole post by itself), but we finished it. And of course, as is the way in the film business, it's now in someone else's drawer, awaiting an opportunity to pitch it.

In 2018, when my dad was at home and dying of pancreatic cancer, I was back in NY in July to help with his caregiving. At night, I began watching Hallmark's Christmas movies as a way to escape from the daily sadness as I watched my father's decline. The whole experience inspired me to write my second holiday-based screenplay, this time a dramatic piece about a dying father and a son's reconciliation with him before his passing.

Author's note: the dying part was the only biographical part of the screenplay. My dad and I never had a falling out. In fact, we grow closer over the years.

Last summer, I was in NY visiting my mother and she was watching the Hallmark Channel's holiday movie offerings. Not to belittle those who write those movies, but it didn't take many viewings to realize they were very similar. I thought, hey, I could write those without a lot of effort.

Then this past Christmas, my wife and I watched a bunch of movies in this genre and I got a flood of more good ideas.

Since then, I've written three more Christmas-based scripts, some rom-coms, some dramatic, including one I just finished yesterday. I sent that off to my friend to see if he wanted to partner again. He liked the logline so much, he asked me to send him the rough draft.

Who knows where this will go?

Yours in holiday spirits,
Michael

Another Park, Another Sunday

I woke up with that old Doobie Brothers song in my head this morning. In case you're not familiar:

If I were inclined to interpret this, I'd say that's the way life has become for many of us. Some religious-minded people welcome Sunday as their special day to connect with God and their community. For them, being kept away from weekly services has been challenging, but fortunately, a lot of houses of worship are shifting to an online format to accommodate the demand from their respective flocks.

For the rest of us (at least those of us currently working and recent retirees), by Sunday evening, there was always a fear of dread because the next day would start a new week of stress at the office or whatever one called their workplace.

There are many (too many!) Americans furloughed right now, perhaps permanently. The new unemployment claims just got released and it's shocking to see how badly this pandemic has impacted businesses, particularly small ones. And those lucky ones who have jobs they can telecommute to (or is it from?), they're working ungodly hours to make up for the reductions in force their companies are implementing.

When every day feels like Sunday, you'd think you'd have some level of peace of mind. Generally speaking, that's how it is to be retired for many people. You do lose track of what day it is because unless you've structured your life to do so, there is no schedule you absolutely need to follow. Do as little or as much as you want, no one's looking over your shoulder.

I tend to like schedules and live by them and yet I still sometimes have to double-check what day it is. I can only imagine how younger people, especially those trying to work at home with kids, are adjusting.

Yours in waiting,
Michael

Bread, Glorious Bread

Back in the day after I divorced my first wife, I bought a bread machine. They were pretty popular and fairly new back then and being newly single, I figured I could use some enjoyment in my life. I found the smell of fresh-baked bread therapeutic and gorged myself on the stuff until work found overtook my life. Like so many people, I put it in the closet to collect dust.

When I got remarried, my new wife brought a bread machine to the marriage. I don't even remember if we used them much all the years we had them, but we finally gave them to Goodwill because they took up much-needed space.

About a year and a half ago, I got the bug to get a bread machine again. Despite the fact both my wife and I eschewed unnecessary carbs, we still bought bread at the store, so I figured I might as well make it for us.

I loved the thing from the very first use and have consistently made bread every time I was close to running out, only taking a break when we went out of town for two months last year. I have my own recipe--a mix of wheat, all-purpose, and bread flours and a couple of scoops of fiber powder for the added roughage, as it were.

Even though I'm not a baker (despite my love of cooking), I used the bread machine to bakes cakes a few times, too, but bread is my jam (no pun intended).

As it turns out, though, my wife doesn't like any other bread than sourdough, even if it's homemade. For a while, I considered buying a starter, but I didn't want to commit to the weekly feedings because if we went out of town, it would go dormant (perhaps for good) while I was gone.

Since we're in a stay-at-home mode right now, I decided it would be a good time to begin my own starter. My handy-dandy recipe book had a simple starter recipe, so I used that. Today was day 2 of the project. I have to feed it for a total of 5 days and then once a week.

I'll use this space to report on my first loaf with my starter.

Yours in yeast,
Michael

Overachieving in Pandemic-land

Okay, I admit it. I'm an overachiever, and like most of my kind, I'm a failed one at that. At least, that's what I believe in my heart of hearts.

With that confession over, this unique environment we're in--being discouraged from going out in public unless absolutely needed really provides opportunities to overachievers like me.

I already talked about my reading and writing time. No surprise, I track all that on spreadsheets and daily journals.

I haven't returned to coding since my dad passed away in August 2018. Nothing to do with his dying, per se, though that was indeed horrible. Contracting pancreatic cancer while one is in their mid-80s leads to a real cruel ending. Even though my dad was a professional programmer (a career I pursued for thirteen years until circumstances derailed me into a management position I never escaped from),

I don't have a mental block or anything. I just stopped doing it, instead devoting more time to my writing.

Same on the art front. For a time, I was creating digital abstract art like mad. I downloaded apps (mostly free) to make these pretty far-out "paintings" and had slowly developed my own style. But I stopped a year or so ago and haven't been back to it since.

Again, there's no reason. I just stopped.

I've been pretty consistent with my home workout program which supplements my gym workouts. That hasn't changed in any meaningful way in the last three years.

As I'm being bombarded with emails from Coursera and CreateLive (among others), luring me with short-term classes promising to teach me all manners of things I'd love to learn, I decided to be judicious and pick one new activity: yoga.

Now I'm already doing some yoga poses as part of my home exercise. I've also downloaded yoga apps to my iPhone, fully intending on starting a program of daily yoga. However, the price just to try the course out to see if I could stick with it prohibited me from using them.

Enter Sunsa Yoga, an iOS app that at least has beginning sessions that are free. I started out with the 16-minute yoga sessions for beginners and have enjoyed them so far. The only downside of this app is they don't have an iPad version (your tablet will run the app, it's just not in designed for the form factor of the larger screen).

So while I'm not taking up watercolors or knitting or learning Icelandic, I am doing something for my physical health...and that's all right with me.

Yours in flexibility,
Michael

Reading in Self-Isolation

Like most writers, I love to read and always have. When I was a kid, Santa or my parents or both would make sure I had stacks of books in lieu of toys, though I got plenty of those, too. Same with Easter, birthdays, and pretty much any other holiday.

I devoured books and almost always could be found with a book in my hand or the latest Hardy Boys mystery bookmarked on my nightstand. A true bibliophile.

Back in the day, Scholastic Book Club (which I note is still around) would have our teachers hand out a catalog every year--maybe before the holidays, I don't remember--and my mom and I would go through the whole thing and I would pick out the ones I wanted.

I didn't get every choice, but I got a lot of them. They would arrive in a big box, though I don't remember whether it came to the school or directly to our home via the post office. Either way, I would be awash in reading material for a few months.

So naturally, this self-isolation is working out well for us readers. On Goodreads.com, I signed up to read fifty books this year. Last year, I exceeded that by twenty-four! I read them mostly by e-reader and in audio format. The latter is perfect for me while I'm doing other mundane tasks that require little or no concentration (housecleaning, working out, food prep, for example).

The thing is I have all the time in the world to read as it is. Officially retired from the 9-to-5 grind for almost seven years, I adjusted easily to my new normal once we were able to move into our new house. That allowed me time for writing and reading to my heart's content...that is when I'm not doing some of my other hobbies.

I'm not bragging--I know the heartache working people have right now. The uncertainty of one's job when you have a family to raise or college loans to pay off sometimes seems overwhelming. I know if I was still working, I'd be sweating out this pandemic for more reasons than running out of toilet paper.

What I'm saying is if you're at home anyway and you're not working, why not pick up a book? I'm not even suggesting reading mine (though that would be nice 😆), but I think reading is good for the brain, if not as an escape, then as another source of knowledge.

Yours in the word,
Michael

Writing While Waiting

As a writer, my natural tendency (and preferred state) is to sit in front of my computer, plotting or writing whatever projects I have going on at the time. At the time of this post, I have two novels, two screenplays, and a longish short story in progress along with this blog I'm updating every day. If you knew me, you'd know I'm at my happiest with a lot going on.

So, while this self-isolation is no picnic, I'm not feeling the least closed in or anxious for human interaction. Perhaps I'm a bit anti-social--certainly, being surrounded by staunch Republicans throughout this community, I don't feel compelled to engage my neighbors and endure their flag-waving and MAGA hats. I have my wife and she's just like I am. Our few friends are scattered throughout the country and we keep in contact with them through email, text, phone calls, and the occasional video chat.

Thus, you can see where I'm going with this...I'm in my milieu. Not having to go out unless I have to is no big sacrifice to me. In fact, it's the exact opposite. It's a luxury. I get to write all day if I want and read when I'm not writing.

Now there is a downside to all of this isolation time. I can't stop my brain from coming up with new ideas for things to write. I use Evernote and Bear, to multi-platform applications that are fantastic for capturing ideas on the fly. I'm one of those writers that if I get something in my head I'd like to write someday, I jot down as much of the story (synopsis, dialog, whatever) as I can until I have enough down where I can come back later to really do something with it.

I know, some writers never come back to their old ideas or write thousands of words or multiple pages (for screenplays you measure in pages), only to abandon it forever. Not me. I've pulled partial scripts or synopses out of my files and have completed first drafts.

These are the times that artists of all stripes relish. Naturally, it's not the circumstances for the isolation we celebrate, it's the end result.

Yours in words,
Michael