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

Stopping Voter Suppression - The USPS story

Let me say up front that unlike many people, I am a big fan of the United States Postal Service. Really. These folks work hard, the price to send mail is still relatively cheap, and they are (mostly) pleasant people to work with.

Congress seems to have made it their mission over the last few years to do away with the post office. The laws they've passed have made it unable to compete in the global shipping market. They enacted the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act (PAEA) which "requires the Postal Service, which receives no taxpayer subsidies, to pre-fund its retirees' health benefits up to the year 2056."

This link from 2018 gives a quick overview of the insanity:

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-04-04/congress-not-amazon-messed-up-the-u-s-postal-service

As everyone who pays attention knows, the GOP hates the American voter. Or to be specific, they hate voters who will vote against their party. Instead of trying to woo voters to their way of thinking, Republicans have done whatever they can to suppress Americans' right to vote. For example, they've:

• Instituted gerrymandering to give Republicans more seats in the House
• Blocked every initiative to implement automatic voter registration
• Thwarted any attempts at setting aside a national voting holiday
• Fought to illegally purge voter rolls
• Implemented other tactics to prevent voting or harass voters

Now, Trump comes along, and with the Republicans in the Senate, didn't include funding for the USPS in the first pandemic emergency bill and doesn't plan to in the second. Why? 

Simply put, there's a push by major voter groups to pass a national vote-by-mail initiative. Considering that November is not all that far away, it makes sense to keep people away from the polls if at all possible.

Vote-by-mail is something that currently works in some of the states, including my own (Arizona), and it works well! Vote-by-mail almost ensures more people will vote and the Republicans (and Trump) have admitted that would be bad for their party.

Let me repeat that: the GOP wants fewer people to vote because it would be disadvantageous to them. They realize that if all eligible adults voted, they would be wiped out because the majority of Americans know they're horrible. 

Why else would they want to suppress the vote? There is no legitimate reason I can think of.

Of course, they lie and say voter fraud is more likely, which we know is a lot of garbage because if they carried about that, they would be doing something to prevent Russia from influencing our elections this time around.

They are so desperate to hold power they're willing to lie, cheat, steal, and intimidate to make sure that happens. And Trump, the most corrupt president to be elected in American history, wants to remain in his taxpayer-funded retirement home, complete with multi-million dollar golf outings, free private planes everywhere, and 24/7 security.

This is the America we've become, ladies and gentlemen. This is an embarrassment.

A Thank You Letter to Donald Trump (satire)

A LinkedIn connection of mine messaged me this today. I wish I had written it, but it's too good not to share. With attribution, I give you a thank you letter to Donald Trump (emphasis my own).

Douglas Reynolds writes:

“Thank you, President Trump, for Making America Great Again! First, for the little things, too often overlooked in this age of fake news and alternative facts. You've taught our children to call people derogatory names. You've taught our children to blame others for their own actions. You've taught our children to avoid taking personal responsibility for anything. You've turned demeaning those who don't agree with you into an art form and brought back bullying after all those nambypambys tried to suppress it. You've forced many parents to consider parental filters for televised presidential addresses. But many people don't know that that's not all the greatness you have given us.

You've reversed the small steps that we'd made over many decades in fighting racism and intolerance, exacerbating the worst aspects of our nature as tribal animals. After all, there are good people on the white supremacy side, too. Oh, and you've brought back the nationalism movement of the 1930's and combined it with the McCarthy era paranoia of the 40's and 50's. I love medleys, but that's a very impressive accomplishment!

Furthermore, thank you for reversing forward-thinking environmental rules meant to address the long term health of our planet, in favor of short term gains in the stock market. You certainly improved unemployment! (Until recently) there were far more low-paying second jobs that people could get to supplement their primary low-paying jobs. So they could pay their rent! Or maybe get health insurance. But certainly not both. (Those people are so disrespectful!) And it worked! (Until recently) the stock market was booming, built on the backs of those unappreciative people and the poorer health of the planet for future generations. 

I especially liked the relaxing of ivory import restrictions. Now Junior can shoot some more elephants! (I hope he gave you the tail he cut off with his pocket knife.)
And you kept your promise! You drained the swamp of previous administrations' lobbyists, replacing them with your own lobbyists. Putting an ex-coal lobbyist in charge of the EPA was brilliant! That'll show those people who want clean air. Ungrateful bastards. 

And I especially liked that you drained the swamp of many highly qualified team members, even though you hired them! I'm eagerly anticipating the firing of HHS Inspector General Grimm, who has had a brilliant career since 1999 and was appointed this past January, (that means under your administration, many people don't know that), but who made the mistake of doing her job and compiling a survey of undersupplied hospitals that Jon Karl explained to you at your latest, "react to questions like a third grader," press conference. 

I also gotta admit that you've done a great job of making sure that anyone from your administration that is allowed to speak in public can efficiently recite the words, "Under President Trump's leadership." That's nine syllables! Well done. 

Oh and finally, thank you so much for treating the impending pandemic so lightly as to not alarm your citizens, or more importantly, the stock market. Through your great leadership, we've learned that by merely denying something, it can't actually hurt us! We had the most warning of anyone on the planet. We saw it coming. We watched it spread across the world, getting closer and closer by the day. We watched South Korea react quickly and efficiently. It blindsided the world! But since you assured us that you had it under control, that it would soon go away magically, that we only had 15 cases and would soon go down to 1 or 2, Covid-19 never got here and churches are still full in the South! 

And right now, as Bill Gates warns that we need to be planning and building the factories and capabilities to manufacture billions of doses of vaccine when it is finally synthesized, I'm confident that you are leading the charge to do just that. Because "billions" is a really big number–a lot of zeros. Not many people know that. Because once we DO have a vaccine, we don't want to face a shortage, do we? That would be bad. Really, really bad. 

Thank you, President Trump. Everything you've done has been beautiful. Perfect-it's-perfect beautiful! Better than anyone has ever done. Other countries are calling, saying, "how did you do that?" You've done the most ever in history. And that's a long time. History is. But what do I know? I'm not a doctor. But what do we have to lose? Everyone says that. Many, many people are saying that. 

And finally, thank you for making things so much easier for ME. For my entire life, I've struggled with who to vote for: Carter? Reagan? Bush? Perot? Obama? Romney? I gave them all a check mark. I've expended so much energy over the years wading through the noise, investigating, trying hard to pick out the very best person. And that was the same for state and local elections! It was always a time-consuming effort. But you've eliminated that chore for this one time, right-leaning centrist! Thanks to your strong leadership, (see, I said it!), I'll never have to spend time thinking and researching again. Because I'll never cast a vote for a Republican again. At any level. Period. 

Ain't America Great?"

The Daily Propaganda Show

We are living in an unprecedented moment in our history. The world is seized by a dangerous pandemic, which has caused significant changes in virtually every aspect of our lives. There is a strong possibility that many of these changes will remain permanently embedded in the fabric of our society.

In the past, the primary source for guidance in crises such as the COVID-19 emergency was the federal government. We looked to Washington to provide assurances our country remained in good hands, that there was stable stewardship leading the ship of state through such rough waters.

No more.

Now, we're assaulted verbally, emotionally, and intellectually by the partisan screeds of Donald Trump, which are sometimes alternated with good medical information.

I just can't watch them. I can't stand his voice, I can't stand his lies, I can't stand his snideness. Call it Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) if you will, I don't care. Trump has been a loathsome creature for as long as I can remember (this is going back to the 1980s for ). I despised him then and I despise him now, only more so because somehow he got elected to the highest office in the land.

We, the American people, don't need a daily propaganda sh#tshow being forced upon us. Those of us with working faculties don't want to have to spend the entire pandemic briefing hitting mute whenever the orange-tinged baboon takes the podium.

This whole affair--Trump's mishandling of the warnings from various governmental agencies through the attempt to smear Chinese people for the spread of the disease (leading to Chinese-Americans being threatened) through the constant blaming of Obama (WTAF?)--is an affront on common sense and simple decency.

Every day, the cable news channels are flooded with a new Trump campaign rally. He insults reporters from news agencies he doesn't like, gives validity to those who praise him (some of which are the most wacko of all of them), and generally acts like an uncultured, undignified slob.

Historians will look back on this era and wondered how American fell so far to have elected such a bumbling twit and then didn't have the good sense to get rid of Trump before he did too much damage. That is, IF there are historians after his reign of terror.

Yours in frustration,

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