Keeper of the Clown Bell

In the spring of 2021 I had a near death experience when my Chevy Silverado loaded with 30 cases of wine was rear-ended at 50mph  by a young lady who was texting-while-driving at 9:30 AM. Her Mercedes sedan flashed in my driver side mirror a moment before impact and that microsecond of awareness gave me just enough time to pull my foot off the break and jam the gas so when she plowed into my trailer hitch the impact met no resistance and launched my truck across the road and into the woods. I had stopped in the road, left blinker signaling, waiting for an oncoming pickup truck to pass and, by the grace of God, it did pass me just as the distracted driver in the mirror slammed into my flashing taillight. Everyone walked away from the crash with no serious injury but if the impact had transpired 2 seconds earlier it would have been a “Road Warrior” bloodbath of terror and death. When I stepped out of my vehicle and looked through the roadside trees I had miraculously missed hitting i...

Driving down Commonwealth Ave. in my '79 Caprice Classic while listening to late night alt-rock on WERS 88.9 FM broadcasting from Emerson College and spinning tunes from Mission of Burma, O Positive and Christmas into the aether via electromagnetic radiation. The brown 4 door sedan was affectionately named "the mud shark" at that time (1986) - later, after a Trompe L'oeil Marbling by my sister it would be called "the slab" - and it drifted atop the bumpy Back Bay streets as a reckless predator searching for a parking spot. The DJ was jabbering between songs about new music, upcoming shows and whatnot before wrapping with the admonition, "If these guys ever come to town be sure and find yourself ticket because their drummer Roland is amazing" and then he put the needle down on  Big Black's "Bazooka Joe." Steve Albini starts barking about some guy named Joe, Roland (the drum machine) jumps in with an uptempo beat and after a good long w...

 " Why is the Moon exactly the same apparent size from Earth as the Sun? Surely this cannot be just coincidence; the odds against such a perfect match are enormous. " I've often thought the exact same thing and was thinking it very hard three weeks ago on April 8th at 3:17pm ET when I witnessed a 91% solar eclipse while standing bearfoot in the grass caveman style and staring up at the sky. As the disk of la luna moved across the face of the sun I bore witness to what appeared to be random evidence of a grand design drawn up and established by a creator God with infinitely inscrutable motives. And that's just the caveman level observations but when I contemplate the vastness of our solar system (to say nothing of the expanding universe) and the true size and distance of the planetary objects involved in this dance I am truly humbled and in awe of the divine proportions in this phenomenon. What are the odds? For me the odds are infinitesimally tiny to the point of absu...

  When I was a young man I had the opportunity to travel around the world on a 9 month odyssey with a crew of cinephiles under the direction of an organization called  The International Honors Program .  The tale of this extravagant boondoggle will be told another day but for the purposes of this commentary I will say that the expedition took place in a mid-80's cold war world when movies, radio and television (even newspapers) actually had cultural and political impact - that is to say, before the digital age. I started scribbling these musings weeks ago and (in my mind) went down many paths; some lead to the past, others to the future and still others to places that don't exist. How did I get to the paragraph I'm presently composing? Well, it started with Noah Hawley and the TV series Fargo which he writes and directs because, as it happens, this talented auteur graduated from Sarah Lawrence College in 1989 and that means he might have known one of the Steve's on the ...

  It’s been a few years since I did my last Oscars review because I don’t watch these movies anymore and ever since the “Moonlight” win I’ve lost interest in the spectacle but this year… this year I’m back. Still haven’t watched any of the movies (except Oppenheimer) but I did see a film that should have won but didn’t. Read all about it. BEST PICTURE NOMINEES AMERICAN FICTION -  Black Lives Matter. West World season 1 on HBO was okay, and Jeffery Wright’s awakening to the fact that he wasn’t what he thought himself to be was moving and sad. We’ve all been there - realizing a truth that everyone else already knew but were too embarrassed to mention. I wish these guys would make a movie about Kanye. ANATOMY OF A FALL -  Guerre tout le temps. I just don’t care. Die. Go to jail. Or be free. Whatever you need to do but don’t drag me into your horrible dramatic life with massive disfunction and French ennui.  BARBIE -  White Loves You. Great memes. I mean, honestly,...

As a prelude to inserterection Day Poop POTUS Jo(((k)))e Brandon made a pilgrimage to Valley Forge and upon that hallowed ground mumbled the curious supplication: Is Democracy still America's sacred cause? I'm not going focus on #DementiaHitler or his scripted answer to the question which was as dishonest and stupid as the last time he defiled a place of civic importance with his accusatory rhetoric and purposeful misreading of the nations spiritual mission. See KOTCB  Orange Brandon Razing  for a full review of that desecration and  World War Zzzz  for a follow up musings which, as it happens, link to the question of the hour. At the end of this meditation I will address one glaring historical observation that simply can not pass uncorrected but for the purposes of this post I will focus my comments on the real inserterection and why it happened. Here's an inserterection timeline with pithy descriptions + some reference links at the end. Attention: 2008 - Financial ...